


In Another Lifetime

by CautiousOptimism



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Drama, F/M, Family, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Will goes on a journey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-24
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-03-25 12:46:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 38,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3810973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CautiousOptimism/pseuds/CautiousOptimism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’d choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I’d find you and I’d choose you”</p>
<p>AU. What if Will had gone to see MacKenzie after she was stabbed? How would their lives have changed? Will gets to see how his actions would have changed his fate and gets thrown into a future he could never have imagined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Hundred Different Lifetimes

**Author's Note:**

> This idea has been floating around in my head for a while, I've just been procrastinating about getting it done. The basic premise for this story came from the quote below and the movie The Family Man, and it pretty much just snowballed from there. It's a bit trippy in the beginning, having been inspired by all the movies I've seen having to do with alternate realities ( like Mr. Nobody, The Butterfly Effect, Shrek Forever After and Groundhog Day ) so this is pretty much just to test the waters to see if you all like the story. Happy Friday!

_“I didn't fall in love with you; I walked into love with you, with my eyes wide open choosing to take every step along the way. I do believe in fate and destiny, but I also believe we are only fated to do the things that we’d choose anyway. And I’d choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I’d find you and I’d choose you” – Kiersten White, The Chaos of Stars_

**2009**

_Charlie sighs as he listens to the man on the other end of the telephone._

_“Shit” he mumbles. He’s was on the phone with CNN’s news division president, who just happened to be an old friend of his. “And they’re sure it’s her?”_

_“Yeah, we’re sure. A member of her team is with her right now but he’s just a kid, a fresh senior producer named Jim Harper” Rick pauses “Listen Charlie; I just thought Will should know. He and MacKenzie were…close. And I know their relationship didn’t end on the best terms but I don’t want him hearing this from wire reports”_

_Charlie swears again. Since Will had come to work for him, Charlie had known that he was dealing with heartbreak. Charlie just had no idea that the woman who had broken his heart was his old EP because Will didn’t like to talk about what had happened between them. All he knew was that this woman had really hurt him, more than Will actually let on.  “Alright. Thanks, Rick. I’ll tell him as soon as the show is over”_

_*_

“Um, Sir?”

Will looks up from the notes that he was scribbling on his index cards to the anxious looking young blond girl standing to the side of him near the corner of the anchor desk. He really hated it when people disturbed him during a show but at least it was almost over.

He’s pretty sure her name is Ellen but he decides not to risk it and just taps on his ear piece. “Don’t call me sir and we have twenty seconds back so you should probably clear the studio”. He goes back to jotting down the extra notes his current EP gave him before the break.

 The young girl doesn’t leave but just shifts nervously from foot to foot holding onto the small piece of paper in her hands for dear life. “I know Sir-um I mean Will, but I have a message from Mr Skinner asking you to please come straight to his office after the show, its urgent”

She gets it all out in one breath and Will nods dismissively at her. “Okay, clear the studio”. She nods and scampers away.

 As they move into the last few minutes of the broadcast Will wonders briefly what the meeting with Charlie is going to be about, although their post-show drinks have been getting more and more serious lately with Charlie hounding him about the content of his show.  Charlie doesn’t care about the ratings but he does and it’s becoming a sore point between them. He finds it hard to explain to Charlie that the ratings are all he has now. The higher the ratings, the more they love you. And if they love him he doesn’t have to think about how _she_ hurt him.

Will finishes up the show with no problem and stops by his office to quickly change out of his suit. He finds Charlie sitting at his desk with a glass of whiskey in his hand and another set in front of the vacant seat he knows Will is going to occupy. This can’t be good.

“I see you’ve started without me” Will smirks as he moves into the office and stands in front of Charlie’s desk.

Charlie doesn’t return his smile, instead just nodding to the vacant seat in front of him motioning for Will to sit down. He does and he hasn’t even taken his first sip when Charlie stars talking.

“Will, I’ve just gotten off the phone with Rick Kaplan, your old news director at CNN”. Charlie pauses then, taking a sip from his glass and Will looks up at him confused as to where the conversation is going. “He just informed me that a few hours ago, MacKenzie McHale was stabbed while covering a protest in Islamabad.”

Will feels his heart stop and his breath catch at the mention of her name. All the feelings that he thought he had buried deep down come roaring to the surface again but he says nothing and just looks at Charlie with an emotionless face. All that Will can really think is that she must be dead. Charlie would only be telling him this if she was dead, right? He just stares straight ahead and steadies himself for the worst.

 When he doesn’t respond Charlie just keeps speaking. “She was stabilised at a local hospital but she’s being air lifted out of Pakistan as we speak, to the nearest U.S military hospital. She’s still critical but they think she will be alright, we’ll only know once she’s been treated at military hospital”

At those words he lets out the breath that he had been holding and tunes Charlie out. He can see that the man’s lips are moving but his brain doesn’t process it. All he hears is the chorus of _MacKenzie stabbed MacKenzie stabbed MacKenzie MacKenzie MacKenzie_ thumping in his head. He shuts his eyes and tries to regain control of his emotions and push all thoughts of her away. He had spent much of their time apart trying to erase the image in his head of her and Brian Brenner. Every time he felt like he had forgiven her, or missed her or had the urge to pick up the phone and tell her to come home; the image of her and Brenner would pop into his head and the pain of it all came back in a flash. So he buries it all and focuses on the one thing he does have: his work.  She’s alive so she will be fine; he doesn’t need to worry about her if she’s still alive.

“Will? Will say something. It’s gotten strange now, are you able to hear me speaking?”. Charlie’s voice snaps him out of his thoughts.

Will shakes his head and leans forward in his chair, grabbing his drink and downing it in one go. “Yeah, I heard everything you said”

“Well, are you okay? Do you need to take some time off work or-” but Will cuts him off.

“I’m fine and no I don’t need to take any time off” he stands abruptly and begins to move towards the door.

“Will, wait. Don’t you want to talk about this? Or find out where she is and maybe go and see her?”

That stops will in his tracks.

“Go and see her?!” Will asks turning back to Charlie and looking at him disbelievingly.” She’s the one who decided to go to that war zone Charlie. She sent herself there after _bludgeoning_ on my heart, so forgive me if I don’t immediately run to her side!” He’s seething now. It’s not that he hates her, because he doesn’t.  He just can’t let her in again; he just can’t open that door again. He experienced it over and over again with his father; Will forgave him and then his dad would just turn around and hurt him again. He can’t let himself be vulnerable again.

Charlie gives him a sympathetic look and comes out from around his desk to stand next to him. “I know she hurt you, but I really think you should go and see her. If not that at least call her”

Will shakes his head vehemently, his anger and pain clouding his judgement. He shrugs off Charlie’s attempts to comfort him and walks out the office. He can hear Charlie calling out after him, telling him to reconsider but he just ignores it. He plans to find the nearest bar and drown his sorrows. He just wants to bury the feelings that have come to the surface.  He hasn’t replied to any of her email, texts or calls in the last two years. He’s not about to start now.

Will leaves the ACN building and heads to the bar across the street that he knows the staff love. He doesn't go there often because he generally doesn't like to socialise with the people from work and he’s in no mood to see or speak anyone but he’s desperate for a drink. He’s desperate to forget.

He gets to Hang Chews and he recognizes a few people from the office so he opts to sit alone near the entrance at the bar. Before Will can even order a drink, one is placed in front of him. He looks up at the woman behind the bar in surprise.

“Double whiskey, neat. Saw you coming in, you look like you could use it” the bartender says in way of explanation. Will has been to Hang Chew’s a few times for drinks with Charlie but he’s never seen this woman before. She must be new.  He notes that she looks older that the staff they usually have working here, maybe mid 50’s?  There is something oddly familiar about her crystal blue eyes and blond hair.

He nods and mumbles a thank you before downing the drink. The woman just chuckles and pours him another.

“Only one thing can drive a man to drink like this: love”

Will scoffs at that. “I don’t love her” he mumbles into looking down into his now full glass.

“Honey, if she’s got you all messed up like this; you must have some strong feelings for her.”  The woman leans on the bar and looks him square in the eye.

“You don’t even know me, how could you possibly know how I’m feeling?”

The woman shrugs and unnecessarily runs a cloth over the already dry bar top. “I think I know you pretty well William Duncan McAvoy”

He bristles at that. “How do you know my full name?”

She just laughs and shrugs again “I told you I know you better than you think”

“I highly doubt that. I have the second most watched new broadcast in the country so you probably just googled it”

“Well someone’s mighty full of themselves!” she says and Will can hear a hint of a Midwestern accent in her voice.

“It’s true, those are just the facts. The people of America love me!” he says smugly.

“Yeah but you and I both know that supposed ‘love’ you feel from the audience will never fill the hole MacKenzie left”. Wills head snaps up at that and his eyes lock on her clear blue ones.

“What did you just say?”

“I said that the answers you’re looking for won’t be found in the bottom of that glass. I think you’re gonna regret that in the morning.”

Was he drunk already? He could have sworn he heard MacKenzie’s name come out of her mouth. Maybe he was just hearing what he wanted to hear.

Will shrugs and tips the glass to her in salute before he downs the amber liquid again. “Yeah well, I live a life of no regrets”

“Really Will? You don’t think that you will one day regret not replying to MacKenzie’s emails or calls? Or even going to see her after she was stabbed? Because I can tell you right now that you will”

He’s shocked and a little freaked out. “How do you know about all of that? I’ve never told anyone that”

The woman just smiles at his confusion. “I know many things, Will. I know that MacKenzie hurt you but you still love her and that will never change. I know your father hurt you, your mother and your siblings; and that makes it hard for you to forgive. I also know that you are scared to go and see her now, despite the fact that she is hurt but you not going to her will change the course of both your lives forever”

“Who in the hell are you?” Now he was thoroughly scared. Obviously she was a stalker, whoever this woman was.

“Just think of me as an old friend; someone who’s looking out for you”

Will just jumps up and shakes his head. Obviously his mind was playing tricks on him and he was more intoxicated than he thought. He just needs to go home and sleep it off. He digs out his wallet and drops a few bills on the bar top.

“I don’t know who you are, or what game you’re playing at but I want no part of it.”

“It’s not a game Will, it’s your life. Clearly you are more stubborn than I expected and it will take a lot more convincing to help you see what a mistake you are making by not going to see her”

Will decides that he’s done with the conversation and abruptly leaves the bar. It’s been a long night and all he wants to do is sleep.

“You’ll never be truly happy without MacKenzie! You’ll see!” she calls out after him.

 He elects to ignore her and hurries out to the street to hail a cab. Even in his relatively intoxicated state, he has no trouble finding one and really he’s just glad that no one has recognised him.  He really doesn’t need this ending up in the tabloids.

Will manages to get home in one piece and he immediately stumbles into bed. All he really needs is a good night’s sleep, so that he can just forget for a couple of hours. He really needs to forget MacKenzie McHale, but as he succumbs to slumber all he can think about are the words of the woman from the bar.

**

When he begins to come to consciousness the next morning, the first thing Will is aware of is the warm weight of someone else on top of him.

Although his head feels a little cottony, there is calm that he hasn’t felt in a while and it was the first time in years that he had woken up feeling refreshed. He’s buried in a mound of sheets and the body against him is comfortably snuggled into is chest. He can’t really remember much of last night or even if he came home with someone; and despite the fact that he didn’t usually cuddle with the woman he bedded, Will didn’t really mind the feeling of this woman on top of him. Her hair smelled like lavender shampoo and there was something oddly familiar about the way she was wrapped around him.

He cracks his eyes open and is immediately met with a mop of dark hair spread out over his chest; which was strange since he had made an effort to avoid brunettes since _she_ broke his heart. He lets his eyes adjust to the light and as he looks around he realises that he does not recognise anything in the room.

Where the hell was he? And who was he in bed with?

Will, lifted his head and craned his neck down slightly so he could see the woman’s face past her mounds of hair…and his breath caught. This wasn’t possible.

In shock he felt himself jump up and off the bed, effectively dumping her sleeping body onto the bed in one swift motion. The woman in question was jerked awake, and looking up at him through confused and sleep heavy eyes. Now that he could really see her face properly, there was no denying it…

It was MacKenzie McHale.


	2. Who Am I, Darling to You?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The feel of her soft hand catches him off guard because it’s all too familiar and it brings back a rush of memories and emotions. The motion is enough to make Will jerk away from her touch, causing her to look up at him apprehensively.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off, thank you to everyone for the positive response to the first chapter! it was amazing. Secondly, sorry that this one took so long to post. It's been a crazy week, but I finally managed to get this up. The next chapter will follow shortly. This chapter was a bit harder to write but it really just setts the scene for whats coming. Enjoy!

_“Everything carries me to you. As if everything that exists, aromas, lights, metals, were little boats that sail toward those isles of yours that wait for me”- Pablo Neruda_

This had to be a dream, right? There was just no possible way that he could be in (what he assumed to be) MacKenzie McHale’s apartment and in her bed!

“Will?” she calls out sleepily from the bed, looking at him with a worried expression. “What’s the matter?”

All he could do was stare at her, unable to formulate the words to properly articulate what was going through his mind at the moment. He wanted to kick himself for noticing how beautiful she looks, bathed in the glow of the morning light. He closes his eyes briefly and runs a hand over his face trying to piece together just what had happened last night.

Then it all comes back to him.

 He remembers going to Charlie’s office and being told that Mac had been stabbed in Islamabad. Then he remembered storming out of Charlie’s office and going down to the nearest bar and having a few more drinks before heading home. Alone. How he got into MacKenzie’s bed, he’s not sure. When she had gotten _here_ , he’s not sure of either. He’s not even sure where _here_ is.

“You-” he says pointing to her “You’re supposed to be in Pakistan”

“What? Billy, it’s too early for this” Mac says flopping back onto the bed.

“But…but you were stabbed and Charlie told me and were just in his office...”

“Will, it’s really too early for this and the alarm hasn’t even gone off” she replies sleepily with an arm flung over her face. “I don’t know what’s with you this morning, but I’m going to try and get some more sleep before our little bundle of energy comes barging in here”

 He had no idea what she was talking about, but before he could question her further, a knock was heard on the other side of Mac’s bedroom door.

“Mommy? Daddy?” a small voice calls out.

MacKenzie sighs and sits up a little in bed. “I guess that’s a no to more sleep” she mumbles. “Come in darling”

The words are barely out of MacKenzie’s mouth when the door flies open and a flash of dark hair speeds in and makes a beeline for the bed. A little girl, who looks about four years old, throws herself onto the bed and crawls up to where MacKenzie is still nestled under the sheets. Mac takes the little girl into her arms easily and begins to pepper the child’s face with kisses, emitting fits of giggles from the child. When she seems to tire of their game, she bounces over to where Will is standing at the end of the bed.

Will can hardly believe his eyes. MacKenzie had a _kid!_ A kid who was the spitting image of her.

“Good morning, daddy!” the kid spouts happily while jumping on the bed in front of him.

 _No. No. No._ He’s positive that he’s forgotten how to breathe.

Will stays frozen in place as he just stares at the kid with his mouth slightly agape; while she looks up at him expectantly waiting for his reply. She must have made a mistake because he was definitely not her father. Obviously MacKenzie had been dishonest with the child about her parentage.  For one thing he hadn’t seen Mac in two years and he hadn’t had sex with her in just as long. Besides that, she looked exactly like Mac, and that on its own was startling enough on its own. This had to be some sick joke.

“What in the fuck is going on, MacKenzie?”

The little girl gasps as the words leave his mouth. “Daddy said a bad word!”. She shrinks back from him and scoots over to her mother, while eyeing him doubtfully.

“Will! What is wrong with you?” Mac exclaims, getting up from the bed and lifting the small child into her arms. “Why would you say that in front of her?!”

Mac walks up to him and brings the back of her hand to his forehead as if checking for his temperature. The feel of her soft hand catches him off guard because it’s all too familiar and it brings back a rush of memories and emotions. The motion is enough to make Will jerk away from her touch, causing her to look up at him apprehensively.

The little girl in her arms watches the whole thing with curious eyes, occasionally hiding her face in Mac’s hair when she catches his glance. It’s the first time Will notices her eyes and how incredibly blue they are. A familiar blue.

“Are you sick?” MacKenzie asks breaking his train of thought.

“No-I, uh, I’m just confused” shifting his eyes from the little girl to MacKenzie. “How did I get here?”

The question causes Mac to rolls her eyes. She kisses the little girls head and tells her to start getting dressed for school and that mummy will be in to help her soon. The child grudgingly agrees and Mac sets her down on the ground and she scampers out of the room, but not before throwing Will a curious glace.

As soon as the kid is out of the room MacKenzie rounds in on him.

“What is with you this morning?” she questions while tilting her head to the side and examining him. “Acting like you don’t know where you are and swearing like that, you know better.”

It became clear to him in that moment that he was the only one who had no idea what was going on.

“Like I said MacKenzie, I’m a little bit confused” and it comes out harsher than he intended.

“We really don’t have time for this, today. How much did you and Charlie have to drink last night?”

“Last night? You know about last night?”. This was all becoming a bit too much for him.

“Yeeess” she says slowly as if she’s talking to a child “You two were out with Don, Elliot and some of the other guys from the office, Celebrating Don and Sloan’s engagement. Any of this ringing a bell?”

He was shocked. “Don Keefer and Sloan Sabbith?”

“Yes Don Keefer and Sloan Sabbith from work. You know, ACN, where we work, and where we’ve worked for the past few years. Did you hit your head last night?” Mac says looking at him like he is an idiot.

None of it was ringing a bell.  The last thing he remembered was getting into his bed alone. And he wanted to tell Mac that but she looked so worried that he decided against it. It was quickly becoming apparent to him that he seems to be the only one in this world that is confused about what is going on, but this wasn’t normal. This wasn’t even possible.

He decides that it’s just best to play along with whatever she was saying until they got to the office. Then he could find out from Charlie what the hell was going on.

“Yeah, you’re right. I think I drank a little too much last night. I’m probably just a little hung over”

 Will could see that Mac was freaking out and didn’t seem to be buying his story.

“And swearing in front of your daughter like that?”

Oh yeah, the little girl. He kept forgetting about _that._ “I-I” he stutters wracking his brain for an acceptable lie. “I’m sorry, it just slipped.”

“Alright. I suppose you can be forgiven ” She studies him for a second, her dark eyes boring into him. “ We’re running late for work. You jump in the shower while I get Stephanie dressed and get her breakfast”

He nods his head at Mac and she gives him one last look before leaving the room. Well, at least now he knew the kid’s name. Will decides that it would be best to do as MacKenzie says given he had no idea where he was. He was glad that he still worked at ACN, and apparently she worked there too. Once they got to work he could find Charlie, and maybe he could help him figure out what was happening.

He looks around the bedroom as he tries to acquaint himself. It’s pretty big, but it’s nicely decorated.  He can see a few of what he assumes to be her things around the room with a child’s toy here and there.  He spots the bathroom door and decides to get a move on, remembering Mac’s instructions. The sooner he got to work the sooner he could figure this all out.

He manages to shower and get dressed without much trouble, only fumbling around when he was looking for all his clothes in what seemed to be his side of the closet. He was glad that Mac was in the shower and too distracted to notice him fumbling around opening random closets in confusion.  He doesn’t get time to explore the house properly because in no time Mac is ready and telling him they have to leave for work. On the way out, though he is able to glean that the house is a brownstone and seems to be on the Upper West side.

Once they’re all ready, they move out the door and pile into the car that was waiting for them.

*

He shifts his eyes downward again and she gives a quiet gasp at being caught and turns her eyes away once more. This had been going on since they got into the car and MacKenzie strapped the kid into the car seat that was positioned between them. The little girl had yet to say another word to him since he pretty much swore in her face earlier. Will felt bad about it, but in his defence he had woken up in a strange bed sleeping next to his ex-girlfriend who cheated on him. He was having a rough morning.

They were on the way to Stephanie’s kindergarten before they made it to work. Will had been trying to get a better look at the kid while trying to keep up with the little bits of conversation that MacKenzie occasionally threw at him about work. She kept mentioning news stories and events that Will had no idea about which was worrying him and making it increasingly hard for him to remain calm and level headed until they got to the office. Mac had been distractedly replying to emails on her phone so she hadn’t noticed his generally limited response. All the while trying to see if the kid remotely resembled him, because all he could see in her was MacKenzie and it was making him flip out internally.

“Do you want mummy or daddy to take you in today?” Mackenzie asks the child when they pull up in front of the school.

“You” Stephanie says in a small voice.

Mackenzie looks up at Will surprised.  “Really? Usually, you only want daddy” she says unstrapping the child from her car seat then opening the door to the black SUV. She climbs out and reaches over for Stephanie placing her on the ground outside the car.

“Say goodbye to daddy before we go”

The little girl just shakes her head and hides herself behind MacKenzie’s legs, throwing him a wary look. Will shifts uncomfortably in his seat. MacKenzie just watches the exchange with a concerned look and motions with her head for him to say goodbye to the kid.

He climbs out of his seat and over the car seat and awkwardly reaches out to pat the little girl on the head, not knowing what else to do. “Uh, goodbye Stephanie. Have a good day at school”

The whole exchange is awkward and Mac is watching him with a suspicious gaze the entire time, and he feels his cheeks redden in embarrassment but she doesn’t say anything. She just takes the little girls hand and walks her into the school.

Will sighs and moves back to his seat. _Awkward_. He needed to figure out what the hell was going on and get out of here because he couldn’t do this. He couldn’t pretend to be that little girl’s father. He was the guy who barely slept; spent too much time nursing his wounds using alcohol; ate terribly; lived in a million dollar glass bachelor pad and never got too attached to anyone. Well at least that was who he made himself after MacKenzie broke his heart. He was not Stephanie’s father.

When Mac comes back she looks at him perplexed. “What the hell was that? That was the most awkward thing I’ve seen! You acted like you didn’t even know her”

“I’m sorry, it was just weird after what happened this morning and I think I scared her, and she looks just like you…” he rambled

Then Mac suddenly got a look on her face. “Oh I see what this is about.” She smiles at him playfully “Someone is clearly jealous because daddy’s little girl, asked for her mother for once”

And she’s totally off base but he decides to just go with it because for the first time that morning she wasn’t looking at him like he’s hiding something. Her eyes are shining with amusement and she’s tilting her head and biting her lip in that way that makes him want to grab her and kiss her. No matter how much she hurt him, or how much anger there was, he could never deny that he was attracted to her.

“Well don’t worry, honey. I’m sure you’re still her hero even though you said a _bad word_ ” she chuckles and plants a quick kiss on his lips and goes back to replying to emails on her phone.

Before he could reply or even process the feel of her lips on his for the first time in two years they pull up to the front of the AWM building and honestly, he’s never been so happy be to at work in his life.

Now all he had to do was get to Charlie and find out what in the world was going on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!


	3. A Cold-Sweat, Hot Headed Believer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And really he wants to tell her that she’s right. That no, he isn’t her father, that he has no idea what he’s doing but seeing her standing before him in all her childish innocence he doesn’t have the heart to. He looks past all the messy hostility within himself and he feels something warm in his chest at the sight of her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter explains how and why Will came to be where he is. After this chapter the story really begins to pick up. Thank you all for the support! Its been amazing! Enjoy!

_“I love you because the whole entire universe conspired to help me find you” – Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist_

__

When the elevator stops on their floor, MacKenzie looks up at him questioningly when he doesn’t make a move to step out of the elevator.

“I’m gonna go up and see Charlie” Will says pointing upward with his thumb.

“Okay” she replies looking him over curiously before turning to walk to the newsroom “Just, don’t be late for the rundown” Mac throws over her shoulder.

When he gets to Charlie’s floor, he can see that Millie is surprised to see him. She tries to greet him and tell him that Charlie wasn’t expecting him so he might be busy; but Will just waves her off and walks right into the office. Charlie is sitting at his desk staring intently at the screen of his computer, glasses hanging off his nose.

“William Duncan  McAvoy ”Charlie says in way of greeting shifting his eyes away from the screen and leaning back in his chair “The last time you were in my office this early, you were getting death threats online, I’m assuming that its nothing that serious?”

That catches him off guard. “Death threats?” Will asks sitting down, then he shakes his head and realises he’s going off topic “Well, that’s not why I’m here to see you. What the hell happened last night?”

Charlie considers him for a moment over the rim of his glasses. “Last night, we both ha d a little too much to drink at Don’s party, and while I generally like to keep myself quite ‘lubricated’, I’m sure that your wife didn’t appreciate the state you came home in last night. I’ll have to apologise to MacKenzie for that one”

“Yeah, you see that’s the part that I’m not understanding”

“Which part?”

“The part where MacKenzie is my wife; the part where we have a daughter, the part where she’s my EP again” Will throws out in one breath.

Charlie looks at him like he’s gone mad. It’s the same look that he’s been getting all morning and Will just wants to pull his hair out.

“You’re telling me that you don’t recall the last five years of your life?”

All will can do is look at him dumbfounded. “The last five years? That can’t be. I was just in your office last night and- and you said she had been stabbed- it was 2009-“

“Will” Charlie says cutting off his rant “You’re scaring me now”

“I’m scaring you?!” Will says with a sarcastic laugh, running his hands through his hair “Today I wake up next to a woman that I haven’t seen in years and a kid calling me ‘daddy’, in a house I don’t recognise and I’m scaring you?”

He’s never raised his voice at Charlie like this, but he can’t help it. He needs answers.

“You’re scaring me” Will says leaning forward in his chair and resting his elbows on top of Charlie’s’ desk. “The last thing I remember is coming into your office last night and having you tell me that MacKenzie had been stabbed”

Charlie raises an eyebrow. “Will that was five years ago, not last night.”

Will leans back in the chair and lets what Charlie just said sink in. _5 years ago._ He does the quick math in his head and realises that it’s 2014. He has woken up five years in the future.

“Actually it was almost five years ago to the day” Charlie says taking a quick look at his calendar “that explains everything. You always get weird when it comes to the anniversary of Mac’s stabbing. You obviously still blame yourself”

“I blame myself for her stabbing?” Will mumbles meekly, mostly to himself but Charlie still hears him

“I remember when she came home and she was mentally and physically exhausted; you two were under the pretence of trying to take it slow, despite getting engaged after not seeing each other for 2 years, and she had moved in with you while still trying to recover from her stab wound.” Charlie addresses him gently “And you blamed yourself for the fact that she came back with PTSD. You thought that if you had just forgiven her quicker, all of that could have been avoided. Her going to war  and getting stabbed and you being here angry and depressed”

Charlie gets up and goes to the bar pouring two glasses of whiskey. He walks back to the desk and places one of the glasses in front of will.

Will thinks it’s too early for this but he takes a sip of it anyway. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Well, my point is that you get like this every year. Even through you and MacKenzie are now married and have a kid you’re still holding onto this guilt” he slowly sips his drink “It’s been 5 years. Time hasn’t helped?”

All will can do is shrug. He feels like he is in some weird dream because things like this did not happen in real life. Weird things like this usually only happened in sappy Christmas movies, but no matter how much he pinched himself he couldn’t wake up. This was not a dream. This was his reality. It was like waking up from a coma and being told you’ve missed the last four and a half years of your life.

He needs more information about his life but he doesn’t think Charlie will be able to help him. If anything he might just report to MacKenzie how strange he has been behaving and that would only lead to more questions and suspicions from his ‘wife’. So he decides to just accept the reasons Charlie has just given him for his strange behaviour. He can use what information Charlie has revealed to help him find more answers.

“Yeah, you’re probably right. I didn’t realise it was coming up on the anniversary of the stabbing. I guess I’m just out of it today." Will says standing up.

Charlie chuckles slightly. “Well you can thank Don’s engagement and Hang Chews for that” he says coming around the desk and patting Will on the back.

Then it hit Will all at once and everything comes flooding back. “The woman from the bar!”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about”

Will pats a confused looking Charlie on the back and tells him that they will talk later before leaving his office and heading straight down to Hang Chews. He didn’t know what he was hoping to find but he had to try.

*

He spots her as soon as he enters the bar. She’s in exactly the same position as the night before and she lifts her head as he enters as if knowing that he was coming.

“Mr. McAvoy, you’re back so soon?” the bartender questions as he walks to the bar.

“You!” Will says pointing accusingly at her “What did you do to me?”

“I knew you would come seeking answers eventually” the woman replies not fazed by the anger in his voice.

“This” Will says gesturing with his hand to the space around him “this is not possible, did you drug me or something.”

She laughs at that. “No of course not” the bartender gestures to the stool in front of him.  “Take a seat and I’ll explain everything”

He sits down and looks up at her expectantly. “Well?”

“You brought this on yourself, Will”

“What exactly is _this_?”

“This is a glimpse into the future you can have, if you make the right choices”

“But I don’t understand how this is even possible? Who are you?” Will asks trying to wrap his head around this situation.

“Like I told you last night, I’m an old friend. I’ve been watching you for a long time, Will” the woman says and he can feel her blue eyes boring into him “and you haven’t been happy for long time, not since MacKenzie left”

Now he’s angry. “So what, huh? You, whoever or _whatever_ you are decided to come and turn my whole world upside down because you think MacKenzie and I make a cute couple? You have no idea what she did to me and how she hurt me. She did this to me, she ruined us!  I’m better off without her” Will is shouting now and he knows he’s causing a scene but he can’t help it. Luckily the bar is pretty deserted given the time of day.

The woman does not at all seem disturbed by his outburst. “Better off without her? That wasn’t really much of a life you were living before, Will. Killing yourself with cigarettes, not sleeping and drinking away your feelings. You were a sad and lonely guy, Will. You missed her and yet you couldn’t read and email or letter or pick up her phone calls. Something drastic had to be done before you ruined your chance at happiness and caused yourself even more pain.”

“But why me? Why do you care whether I’m happy or not?”

“Like I said, you brought this on yourself Will. You made a decision last night that will have a ripple effect on not only your life but MacKenzie’s and your daughters too. The people who sent me care about you and they just want you to be happy.”

“So you sent me to the future I could have if I had decided to go and see MacKenzie after she had been stabbed” he asks trying to understand.

The bartender nods.

“What’s the whole point of this?

“You told me last night that you lived a life of no regrets, but can you really say that is true? I’ve seen your future Will, and you and MacKenzie will hurt each other over and over again, but it doesn’t have to be like that”

Everything around him feels surreal and he just wants to forget all of this.

“How long will I be here” he mumbles dejectedly.

“This is just a glimpse, Will. It’s not forever but how long it lasts is all up to you. You’re here to learn something, and the quicker you do that, the quicker you can leave”

Before he can ask her what he is meant to be learning in this little experiment, his phone buzzes. He looks down and removes it from his pocket, seeing a text from Mac. She’s asking where he is since he apparently missed the 11 A.M. rundown meeting. Will groans as he reads the text. Just when he thought his day couldn’t get worse.

When he looks up from his phone the woman is gone. He sees a young guy tending the other end of the bar and  beckons him over.

“Where did the woman go who was just here?” Will asks and when the bartender just looks at him, he continues “You know, the older woman with blonde hair. I think she was new?”

The guy tells him that there’s no one who works there that matches that description and for a second Will thinks that she was just a figment of his imagination. He has no time to stew on his thoughts because he gets another text from MacKenzie and he realises he needs to get to work.

**

When he gets back to the office MacKenzie is not happy. She pushes him against a wall and demands to know why he has been acting strange the whole morning and chews him out for missing the first run down. Will had managed to calm her worries enough for him to be able to escape to his office.

He was currently scrolling through the news stories that he had missed and doing some research into what had gone on in his life in the past five years. Apparently he had become a ‘liberal’ heavy weight news anchor who took no prisoners and thought of himself as a part of the ‘media elite’. It had MacKenzie McHale written all over it. What really worried him as he scrolled through the news he had missed was, if he would be able to get through tonight’s broadcast. He had to write a script on topics he had no idea about.

He doesn’t know how long he has been sitting at his desk when there’s a knock on his office door before he sees Sloan come in holding Stephanie’s hand.

“Hey bro” She says in way of greeting and Will has no idea when they became so chummy because he hardly remembers talking much to her in the past except for when she was on his show. “My little goddaughter over here was asking for her daddy” she says smiling down at the little girl as they come to stand in front of his desk.

The child still seems to be weary of him and was not looking like she wanted to be left alone with him at all. He vaguely recalls Mac popping into his office to tell him that she was going to fetch the kid from school and asking if he wanted to tag along. He had declined.

“Where’s Mac?” he asks standing up from his chair and coming around his desk.

“She’s just having a quick meeting with graphics so I offered to take this future economist here for a second, when she started asking me for you”

Will holds back a snort at the whole future economist thing. He nods and says a thank you to her before she leaves a reluctant looking Stephanie alone with him for the first time. She stands there looking up at him with her big blue eyes and he has no idea what to do. Sure, he pretty much raised his siblings, but that was over 30 years ago. He has no idea how to do this; how to be someone’s father.

 “Hi Stephanie, how was school?” he asks as they look at each other. In the next second he sees her eyes fill with tears and her lower lip start to quiver. _Shit_. Will immediately crouches down so that he can be somewhat eyelevel with her, although his knees protest. “Hey, hey, don’t cry. What’s wrong?”

“You’re not my daddy” she says with more conviction than a four year old should have and all he can think about is how much she looks like her mother. Her hair is straight and dark brown and reaches just above her shoulders, her mouth and smile are all MacKenzie’s and she seems to have gotten her mom’s height. Her eyes and nose though seem to belong to him. That scares him and astonishes him all at the same time.

And really he wants to tell her that she’s right. That no, he isn’t her father, that he has no idea what he’s doing but seeing her standing before him in all her childish innocence he doesn’t have the heart to. He looks past all the messy hostility within himself and he feels something warm in his chest at the sight of her. Perhaps it’s the odd sense of pride that he feels at the fact that she figured out what no one else had been able to all day: that he was an imposter.

He may not really be her dad but he was all she had for the moment and he couldn’t let her down. “Why do you say that?” he asks in a gentle voice that he didn’t know that he had.

“Because daddy never says bad words and he always calls me Blue Eyes, or Stephie Bear or Gummy Bear or princess or…” she says listing off all the endearments her father lavished on her.

 He really had no comeback for that. “Well do I look like your daddy?”

She nods, a tear slipping down her cheek.

“And do I sound like your daddy?” he asks again hoping to appeal to her child like logic. The little girl nods again. “Well then, princess, I must be your daddy” he says using an endearment that slips off his tongue easier than he anticipated, and he tries to give her a reassuring smile and wiping the tear off her cheek. He remembers how gentle his own mother was and tries to emulate that.

Being the child of two journalists though, she doesn’t just accept the facts given to her. She tilts her head to the side and bites her bottom lip in concentration. She reaches out to reverently trace the lines and groves of his face as if making sure that he is really who he says he is. Will feels exposed having someone inspect him like this, but her small hands are soft and tentative.

“Are you really my daddy?”

This time it’s him who nods. “Yes I am”. The little girl looks so relieved she launches herself into his arms wrapping her arms around his neck as she hugs him, and he almost loses his footing but he manages to stay up right. It’s a strange feeling having the solid weight of her in his arms, but in a way it feels right. He stands up with her still in his arms and he finds that she barely weighs a thing. Will feels that warmth in his chest again and for a moment, with this little girl cuddled in his arms, looking at him like he’s her hero; he can _almost_ forget that this is not really his life. He can almost forget that he is not actually her father and that he’s basically a stranger. He can almost forget that MacKenzie broke his heart.

Almost.


	4. So That I never Feel Alone Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Its then that he realised that he doesn’t know this woman. He doesn’t know this version of MacKenzie; the wife and mother. He remembers her, every which way: how she looked when she was asleep; how she looked when she was happy; when she spoke to her family in England; how she looked in the midst of an orgasm; how she looked when she broke his heart. He remembered it all. All of it was chronicled in his brain, in a repeating loop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I know that this chapter took a while to go up, but it's been a crazy week! Anyway, its the weekend now and I'm getting in as much writing as I can. On the plus side chapter 5 is already half written! Yay! So I'll try get that up soon.
> 
> Thank you all for the continued support! This chapter is extra long too, so enjoy!

_“Sometimes I’m terrified of my heart; of its constant hunger for whatever it is it wants. The way it stops starts” -Edgar Allan Poe_

He’s been watching her the whole morning.

Watching her with her daughter, watching her work and watching her interact with the staff. He’s been watching her every move and he can’t seem to tear his eyes from her. After years of being starved of looking at her, he just can’t help himself. She’s different, not the same MacKenzie that he knew from all those years ago. She’s still brilliant at her work (that much he had seen from their broadcast last night), but she seems more settled now and not the flighty woman he had fallen in love with. Will had met her when she was fresh faced and had just turned thirty. She had come into his life like a whirlwind and he had been enamoured from day one.

She’s obviously older, given that it’s (apparently) been seven years since he had seen her. Her hair was slightly shorter than the last time he had seen her in 2007, and her face had a few more lines. She was a little curvier too, and he assumed that it was from having had a child. And for all the hurt and pain he still had, he couldn’t deny that she was still the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in real life (that was never more obvious than last night when they had gotten home after the show and she had come out of the shower with nothing but a towel wrapped around her hair. The straining of his erection in his boxers more than confirmed his attraction to her). Will had been particularly interested in seeing how she was with Stephanie; looking for fault but it was obvious that both mother and daughter adored each other. He just didn’t know how her and _other_ Will (the one whose life he was living) had gotten to this point; working together again, married and with a kid no less. There were chunks and chunks of this life that he didn’t know about and he had to find them out. Day 2 of being in this strange place and he still had no idea of what he was meant to do here.

“Will? What do you think?” MacKenzie asks breaking him out his thoughts.

She’s standing at the other end of the table staring him down with furrowed eyebrows and all of the staff are turned in their seats to look at him.

It’s the 11 a.m. pitch meeting and he realises he hasn’t been listening at all, not since Mac stood up near the easel in the front and started going around the table. Its then that he realises that he doesn’t recognise half of the faces looking at him. That was another thing he had to do: learn the names of the staff. It seemed that in this world, no one was afraid of him and no one avoided him. He had seen it yesterday when Sloan brought Stephanie into his office and generally how people kept coming in and out of his office without knocking.

“Um, yeah. I agree with everything you just said” He manages to fumble out.

“Good. I was just wondering, because I’ve never heard you so quiet during a rundown. Usually you feel the need to fight me over everything.” Mac says playfully before clapping her hands together and dismissing everyone.

He manages to get back to his office without anyone stopping g to ask him anything. Once there he decides to avoid his work and begins learning the staff’s names instead. He recognises some people like the young Indian guy- Punjab maybe? Then there were some he had never seen, like the guy who seemed to be Mac’s right hand man. He figures they were in the Middle East together because he’s Stephanie’s godfather (Will had found _that_ out yesterday when the little girl had seen him from across the newsroom and launched into his arms screaming ‘Uncle Jimmy!’, and he had caught her on the fly asking how his favourite goddaughter was doing).

Will finds the employee files and learns that his full name is James Harper and that he’s a Senior Producer. He was in fact stationed with Mac and she had brought him in with her to _News Night_. He goes through all the files and finds out that there is a desk producer who is named Gary Cooper.

“Is his name really Gary Cooper” He mumbles to himself.

There is a quick knock on his door before Jim steps through, holding a few papers and pausing when he sees Will sitting at his desk.

“Oh” Jim says stopping in his tracks “ I just came to drop of these reports. I didn’t think you would be here” he says looking a little startled.

“In my own office?”

“No-uh, I just meant that it’s Thursday and its almost one o’clock.”

Will just stares at him blankly with raised eyebrows.

“You usually pick up Stephie from Preschool on Thursdays. I thought you’d have left by now” Jim says shooting a quick glance down at his watch and rocking on his heels.

“Shit” Will says standing up and reaching for his wallet. He figures that Mac would kill him if he left her four year old waiting to be picked up.

“Okay-so I’m gonna go” Jim says running a hand nervously through his hair, quickly dropping the papers on Wills desk then leaving.

Will gathers his things quickly and heads out the door, hoping to avoid his wife (that still feels weird to say). As he flags down a cab, he’s glad that he had paid attention to the name and location when they had dropped Stephanie off at school  this morning ( with the little girl insisting on having both her parents walk her in today, happily swinging their joined hands as she skipped inside).

 

He arrives at the school with just enough time to find her classroom, as most parents and nannies were already there. She spots him from her table where she was sitting colouring.

Stephanie jumps up, grabbing her picture and small purple backpack along with her.

“Daddy!” she says running to him.

Will catches her in a hug and she squeezes her arms around his neck. It still felt odd every time she showed him physical affection. Hugging him, kissing his check, holding his hand. He hadn’t had this much physical affection from another human being in years.

“Hi princess” He mumbles into her neck.

“Look” she says pulling back from the hug but still in his arms “I drawed you a picture for your office”. She shoves the picture right in front of his face.

 Will had noted the pictures, drawings and paintings that were scattered over his office.  There were pictures pretty much documenting the past five years. Him and Mac on what he assumed to be their wedding day, both of them looking ridiculously happy. An ultrasound photo next to that one, which looked more to him like a gummy bear than a baby (and he no understood why that was one of _other_ Will’s nicknames for his daughter). A picture of him holding a newborn Stephanie and looking down at her like she was the most precious thing in the world, while she held onto his pinkie finger with all her might. A recent picture of MacKenzie with Stephanie in her lap and they are both laughing, with matching smiles. A whole life in a few pictures. A life that he didn’t remember, or technically hadn’t really lived.

It looks like a bunch of brightly coloured squiggly lines to him and he’s not really sure what it is. She looks up at him expectantly waiting for his approval. “Wow- that’s really pretty” he says not really sure what a good dad would say in this situation. Stephanie seems pleased with his words though, and throws him a toothy smile before declaring that she’s going to go say bye to her friends before they leave.

When she feels like she has said goodbye to enough of her little friends, they leave the school. As they exit the cab after they pull up to the AWM building, Stephanie tugs on his hand.

“Can we go to the park, please, daddy?” She asks looking up at him with her clear blue eyes.

Will looks around quickly. It’s a warm day, the sun is shining brightly, and it’s not like he is in a rush to get back to work. Bryant Park is right outside the AWM building and he supposes it wouldn’t be too much trouble for them to take a quick walk around the park.

“Okay” He says, nodding down to the little girl. She giggles and slides her hand into his again and they make their way to the park.

Stephanie continues the animated recounting of everything she did today that she had started in the cab. Then she stops suddenly when she sees the carrousel in front of them.

“Can I ride the carsel, pleeease daddy?” she asks pointing in front of her while bouncing on her feet. They really needed to work on her pronunciation of words, he thinks. Then again she was only four.

He never remembers getting to do things like this as a kid and he likes the way her face lights up when scoops her up and places her on the plastic horse of her choice; how she waves to him every time  they come around.

*

The show that they have  that night is not his best and he can tell Mac is pissed at him. Two not-so-great shows in a row is an unusual occurrence for him, for them. This show that they were doing was completely different to the one he had been doing since he moved to ACN and more like the one that they had done when they worked for CNN.  No more twitter feeds and ‘Pop Watch’ or ‘Today on YouTube’. He was off his game and knew that MacKenzie could tell. It was just _odd_ to have her in his ear again, even though it felt right.

After the show, Mac had scooped Stephanie up from where she was sleeping on the futon in her office. Cuddling her closer when they had shuffled into the town car, complaining that she never got to do this anymore because their little girl is getting to be so independent. (Will had learned yesterday that they had a part time nanny for the nights when they would have to work late after the show. The nanny would come and fetch Stephanie at around five from the office and would leave when they arrived home, as had been the case last night). Other than whispering softly to the little girl when she occasionally stirs, the car ride home is silent.

MacKenzie passes the child to him when they arrive at the house complaining about her getting heavy and follows him to the second flood where Stephanie’s room is located. Mac pulls back the bright yellow comforter off the little girl’s bed. Will carefully lowers the sleeping child onto the bed and steps back while MacKenzie pulls the comforter up around her, watching her whisper words of love to the child before sweeping her brown hair back and planting a soft kiss to her cheek.

Its then that he realised that he doesn’t know this woman. He doesn’t know _this_ version of MacKenzie; the wife and mother. He remembers her, every which way: how she looked when she was asleep; how she looked when she was happy; when she spoke to her family in England; how she looked in the midst of an orgasm; how she looked when she broke his heart. He remembered it all. All of it was chronicled in his brain, in a repeating loop.

He has no idea how to reconcile the MacKenzie from _now_ with the one from _then._

As soon as they are out of the room he can’t help but ask “How did we get here, MacKenzie?” he says as he gestures to everything around them as they make their way to the master bedroom. “To be married and with a family? After everything that happened”

“ _That’s_ what you want to talk about, after the terrible show tonight?” she says with a sarcastic laugh as she begins to strip off her clothes. “You basically ignored me when I told you to dump out of that terrible segment that somehow found its way into our rundown”

 He has to look away as she does so. His mind may be clouded with anger for her, but his body certainly was not and the last thing he needed now was a raging hard on.

“You seriously want to rehash the past, a past that you have full knowledge of after what you did tonight?” Mac continues pulling on her pyjamas, then walking right up to him with her arms folded over her chest. “You know that we do not do that type of _stupid_ news-entertainment!”

“It’s my show MacKenzie, I’m the managing editor, in case you forgot and as far as I was concerned it was good television-” he tells her not backing down. He knew that they would have to have this conversation eventually but this is not the conversation he wanted to be having tonight.

“We don’t do good TV, we do the news, Will! You know that!” she interrupts. “The weather, really? I don’t know what has gotten into since yesterday morning, but you’ve been off. I spoke to Charlie, and he says it’s got to do with the anniversary of my stabbing, but I don’t understand. It’s never affected you like this before”

He really doesn’t appreciate being chewed out by her right now and all he wants to do is go back, back to his own reality. He just wants to scream at her that he’s not her husband that he’s the guy she left heartbroken years ago and no, he hasn’t forgiven her for what happened with Bryan. It’s still so fresh in his mind.

“This is not my life!”  He screams suddenly unable to control himself

She looks up at him with tears in his eyes. “What is that supposed to mean? Is this like some weird mid-life crisis? Because I feel like for the past two days you’ve been acting like-“ she pauses. She’s looking in his eyes as if searching for something.

“Like what” He prods.

“Like a stranger!” she throws back with her arms out. “What’s going on?”

Will feels his heartbeat pick up. Could she really suspect? Could she know that he wasn’t her husband? He wants to just blurt it out but she would think he was crazy. She wouldn’t believe it. Hell, he wouldn’t believe it if the tables were turned. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you” he mumbles deflated, turning away from her slightly.

“Just talk to me!” She pleads, griping his arm and not allowing him to turn away. “Will, it’s me. We don’t keep secrets and we don’t lie to each other.” Her voice is soft now.

“We don’t lie to each other? Well what do you call what happened when you were going behind my back with your ex-boyfriend?”. He’s been dying to ask that question. For years now and since he woke up in this world yesterday.

Mac drops his hand and reels back from him as if she’s been slapped. She doesn’t say anything as she turns away from him, heading in the direction of the bathroom.

“Yes, that’s the MacKenzie I know. Turn and walk away when things get hard” he says and he can’t stop the words. Part of him wants to hurt her like she hurt him, even though there’s a bigger part of him who feels like a jack ass for hurting her like this.

She turns around immediately at that. “I’m not walking away! You’re my husband and you’re keeping things from me! You’re brining up ancient history and things that we’ve already worked through and I don’t know why” she shouts. Her face is red and unshed tears pool in her eyes. “And I don’t know what to do”

When he sees the tears his guilt begins to compound. He feels like an ass, he’s just never been able to control his emotions. Not with MacKenzie. “I’m-” he begins but is interrupted by the soft clicking of the bedroom door opening.

And there she is, small and innocent. Wide blue eyes, sleepy and unsure. There she is; the perfect thing that they made. Clutching her teddy bear, bare feet sticking out from the light blue nighty that Mac had dressed her in earlier that night.

“Why are you and daddy fighting, mama?” she asks in a sleepy voice addressing her mother, who was closest to her.

MacKenzie subtly turns away from them and wipes her eyes, before addressing her daughter. “Mummy and daddy weren’t fighting, baby.” She says moving to her and picking her up, cuddling her close “Sometimes grown-ups just talk in loud voices. I’m sorry if we woke you up” she says kissing the little girls head while swaying softly.

“S’okay” The little girl mumbles, while seeking comfort in her mother’s familiar breast.

“Good” Mackenzie says dropping another kiss to her head “but now it’s time for you to get back to bed, little lady” she moves to where Will is standing and motions for him to take the child “Daddy will tuck you back in”

Will gently reaches for little Stephanie, while trying to meet Mac’s eyes over her head but MacKenzie just avoids him and bids her daughter a goodnight before disappearing into the bathroom.

The walk to Stephanie’s room is relatively silent, with just his footfalls and her soft breathing filling the air. He thinks she’s asleep but when he lays her down, he can see that her eyes are open and she is fighting sleep, struggling to keep them open. As he tucks the blankets around her she reaches out a small hand and strokes his cheek.

“Don’t be sad, okay daddy?” Stephanie says in a small voice.

“I’m not sad, Stephie” he says, in a voice just as soft. It’s funny how kids can see right past the lies of the adults around them.

“You’re making that face like when you’re sad” she says not buying his confession for one second “Paddy and me know what will make you feel better”

Who the heck was Paddy? The kid obviously expected him to know who she was talking about, but there was no one else in the room and he knew that they didn’t have a dog. “Paddy?” he asks questioningly, hoping that given the late hour, she doesn’t find it suspicious that he doesn’t know who she’s talking about.

“Paddington Bear, daddy!” Stephanie pulls out the bear she had in her arms, out from the covers. The bear is brown with a blue coat and red hat. “Grandad gave him to me for Christmas, ‘member?”

She is obviously talking about Mac’s father, because he can’t imagine any world where his abusive, alcoholic father would have a relationship with any of his children. Besides that, the bear looks decidedly very _British_ with its duffle coat and rain boots (or Wellingtons, as he’s heard Mac call them).

“Oh yes, silly daddy. I forgot. Well what did you and Paddington have in mind?”

“Well, hugs and kisses always make me feel better when I’m sad” she says as she leans up to give him a tight hug and peppers kisses on his cheek. And it’s weird, all this physic al affection from her and Mackenzie. He had forgotten what it’s like to not be alone. This constantly being around people, when he was so used to being solitary. His home was now full of love and laughter. Will had forgotten what it was like to laugh and have friends (not just Charlie) to have a full life, like this.

He couldn’t help the small laugh that bubbles in his chest at her antics. He couldn’t deny that she was adorable. “Thank you, I feel so much better now” Will says then tucks her back in pulling the comforter around her like he had seen Mac do. “Now it’s time for you to go to sleep, or I’ll be in trouble with your mommy”

She giggles as he plants a perfunctory good night kiss on her check before she insists that the bear needs one too. He feels a bit silly kissing a bear, but it makes the kid happy so he does it. As he moves out of the room and is about to switch off her light, Stephanie calls out again.

“I think maybe mommy is sad too. You should make mommy happy too, by giving her hugs and kisses also”

 She says it with such conviction and belief in him, like she knows that her daddy will do it and not let her down. He promises to try but he knew it was easier said than done.


	5. Somebody Found Me Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And he just can’t read anymore. She did this to them! She’s the one that tore them apart and then sent herself away. He’s just not ready to deal with those emotions yet. Why after all these years, did he still feel so raw? Why is he still able to know exactly how it felt when he heard her confess what she did? Will often wondered if there would ever come a day when he would not feel like his heart had been rubbed raw.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the continued support for this story! I hope this brightens up your Sunday. Enjoy!

_I still think of you often: in the space between seconds, the moments before I open my eyes, and when I need to catch my breath. You are the air in my lungs, a list tucked behind my ear, the words in my veins, tattooed forever on my bones.- Salvador Plascencia, The People of Paper._

_-_

 

He smiles slightly to himself when he wakes up alone in bed the next morning. He feels around just to make sure.  Maybe the last two days were just a dream. The wife, the kid, the house. Everything. All just a very strange dream.

But when he opens his eyes and doesn’t immediately recognise his surroundings, he realises that he’s still _here._

Will sighs and rolls over onto his back, rubbing his hands over his face. He can hear the shower running and he assumes Mac is in there. He still feels bad about the fight they had last night.

He hadn’t gone back to their room right after he had put Stephanie to bed. He needed a moment to think about what had happened. Will had decided that he needed to be more subtle about the fact that he was pretty much an imposter. He doesn’t want to ruin _other_ Will’s marriage so he had to make an effort to at least try to be a better husband. When he had gotten back to the room, MacKenzie was asleep on the opposite end of the bead, facing away from him.

He gets up from the bed just as she comes out of the bathroom, towel drying her hair. They stare each other for a minute.

“I’m sorry about last night, Mac. I don’t know where that came from” he says awkwardly scratching the side of his head. He was lying; he knew exactly where it came from. It came from the corner of his mind that couldn’t stop picturing her and Brian together.

She studies him for a second before reaching out tentatively to trace his face with her hands (just like Stephanie had done two days ago) and it’s entirely unnerving. He’s avoided being physical with her since he’s been here (not because he doesn’t want to touch her, but just because it’s been so long. He’s worked so hard since their break up to try and forget how her skin feels against his. He’s not going to be here forever, so he can’t get used to her again, only to have to go without when he gets back to the real world. He just can’t.)

“Talk to me, Billy”

“It’s just; I’ve had a tough week”. She really had no idea how tough.

“Are you lying to me?” she asks tilting her head and looking him dead in the eye. It made it really difficult to lie.

“No” he says and she seems somewhat satisfied with his answer.

“I know what this time of year does to you Will, you should at least go see doctor Habib. You’ve missed your last couple of sessions and if you won’t talk to me you should at least talk to someone.” Mac says giving him a feather-light kiss on the check before moving towards the walk-in closet.

Oh yes, Abe! He hadn’t gone to see him since after him and Mac had broken up. He had stopped going because he didn’t think it was helping. Therapy would never be able to make him forget that Mac cheated on him or figure out what he had done to make her do it; so he had just stopped going. Maybe Habib would be able to give him some insight into the inner workings of the relationship that he and Mac now shared.

  
**

Habib is able to fit him in that afternoon. He knows that it’s Mac’s turn to pick up the kid, so he doesn’t worry about forgetting her at school today. He’s flipping through his phone when  a guy who looks to be in his early 30’s comes into the waiting room.

“Hi Will” the young guy says whilst standing in front of the door he just came through. “You can come through”

Will was confused. “Are you Abe’s son?” He asks while standing up.

“Yeah, I’m Jack Habib, Will. As you know” Jack says with a small smile shoving his hands in his pockets.

“Nice to meet you”

Jack laughs. “Come on in” Jack says looking at him slightly confused again gesturing to the open door behind him.

“Is your dad inside?” he asks staring to make his way to the door. Is he missing something?

“No”

“Oh, then I can wait” Will says stopping in his tracks. That was weird. Abe was never late for appointments.

The kid looks at him like he’s crazy and honestly he’s tired of people looking at him like this! For the past three days he’s had to deal with everyone looking at him like has lost his mind. Then again, maybe he had.

“Will, my father died five years ago and I took his practice. You know this, you’ve been seeing me for the past 4 years” Jack says slowly like he’s explaining to a child.

“How old are you?” Will questions, not quite believing what he was hearing.

Habib sighs. “We’re back to the Doogie Howser jokes again? See this is why you shouldn’t miss sessions, you forget who I am”

“I-no-”

Jack gestures to the open door again. “Come on in, Will”

Will walks in the office still trying to process what he had just heard, but trying to not let it show on his face because it was apparently information that he should already know.

Once they’re inside Jack takes a seat and gestures for Will to do the same. “So what’s going on?”

He doesn’t know how to say what he wants to say without sounding like he’s lost his mind. _I just woke up two days ago in bed with my ex-girlfriend, who is apparently my wife and the mother of my kid, oh and hey, it’s five years in the future!_ No, that wouldn’t do.

“I’m having one of those weeks where it feels like I have no idea how my life got to this point” Will tries, hoping to convey some of the mess that’s clouding his mind the best way he can.

“Why do you say that?”

He sighs. They sit in silence for a while because Will has no idea how to answer that. He hates therapy and he really doesn’t think this guy knows what he’s doing, even if he is Abe’s son. “I don’t know. It’s just been a strange week”

“Any extra stress at home, that would make you feel this way?”

Will really want to laugh at that. “No”.

“No? Will, you know that you come to me every year around this time and we have to deconstruct the guilt you feel over what happened to MacKenzie in Islamabad. You wanna tell me that in no way impacts your marriage?”

Will shifts uncomfortably in his chair. Everyone seems to think his behaviour has to do with Mac’s stabbing, but he doesn’t know why. He didn’t force her to go over there, she went willingly. Why should he feel guilty? “So I feel guilty about what happened over there?”

Habib nods. “You know you do. You’re a protector Will, you always have been. You protected your mother and siblings from you abusive father-“

“I talked to you about that?” Will interrupts, surprised that he would speak so candidly with this young guy.

Jack points to the notes on the table between them. “Will it’s all you talked about for months leading up to the birth of your daughter. I have files and files full of you talking about your relationship with your father. Then when you came out of prison last year, the feelings of guilt got worse and you told me that you hallucinated him in there.”

“I was in prison?!” Will blurts out, unable to stop himself. He freezes up in the next moment, immediately thinking the worst; that he turned out to be just like his dad and ended up in prison for the same reasons he did. What if he hurt Mac and Stephanie?

Jack sighs. “Will, the point that I was trying to make is that you protect people. Just like you going to jail was to protect Neal and that source for your story. You feel that because MacKenzie got stabbed and very nearly almost died that you failed to protect her, and as a result, when your daughter was born prematurely due to complications from said stabbing, you felt that you failed to protect you family again. The guilt you feel about not having read MacKenzie’s emails earlier, not having forgiven her sooner, its eating at you. It’s not normal for you to have such a guilt complex.”

Now he gets why other Will is so messed up about this. He had no idea Stephanie was born prematurely or that Mac’s stabbing had been that serious. All he remembers is that Charlie said she would be _fine_. And the emails. The fucking emails, that he hadn’t read, who knew that would come back to bite him in the ass years later. He had to go and read those emails. Also he had to find out more about his jail stint, because from the sound of it he was a pretty hard-core journalist these days.

“Turns out that you’re actually pretty good at this, doc”

Habib laughs at that. “Yeah, that’s why you shouldn’t skip appointments. Listen, talk to MacKenzie. Don’t shut her out like you tend to do when it comes to this. I’m sure she feels just as guilty as you about this and you know that. You know she martyrs herself over the whole affair with her ex-boyfriend. I know that because we’ve been back and forth over this.”

Will nods, not really in the mood to rehash Mac’s infidelity. “Yeah”

“Well, our hours up. Don’t miss anymore appointments, Will”  


**

When he gets back to the office an hour later he makes a bee line for his computer and logs into his old email account. He had made his old assistant ( he had a new assistant now. Jenna. She seemed nice enough, though he does wonder what happened to Ellen) funnel all of her emails there. 

He had never opened a single one of her emails, letters or texts. He had gone so far as to get a new number and change his email address. He just…he just couldn’t read them. He just couldn’t. He didn’t think that there was anything that she could say that would justify what she did. She had been _dishonest_ with him for _months_.

He had been angry at first, that’s why he ignored her, but that anger gave way to pain. A pain that he has never really been able to shake.

He takes a deep breath as he opens the one right at the top of the inbox. Dated _27/07/2009_ and he figures that it’s the last one she sent before she was stabbed.

Will clicks on it.

_Dear Will,_

_It’s become obvious that you’re not reading these emails. I guess after two years I can’t really expect that you would._

_I could say that I’m sorry again, but that could never encompass all the regret that I feel. I think of it often, out here in the middle of this war-torn land; the life that we could have had together. I think of you alwa-_

And he just can’t read anymore. She did this to them! She’s the one that tore them apart and then sent herself away. He’s just not ready to deal with those emotions yet. Why after all these years, did he still feel so raw? Why is he still able to know exactly how it felt when he heard her confess what she did? Will often wondered if there would ever come a day when he would not feel like his heart had been rubbed raw.

He knows he’ll have to read them eventually, if he wants to know at least some of what lead to them being together again. Habib had said the he read the letters, all of them and that had helped them.

He’ll read them, he will. Just not today.

Luckily its then that Stephanie chooses to burst in and admonish him for not coming to say hi to him as soon as he got into the office.

 

 **

He’s organising his notes just before the beginning of the show. He assumes MacKenzie’s mic is on because he can hear rustling in the background.

He’d forgotten little things about her. Like how she has two cups of coffee every morning, (with cream and 2 sugars). How she has millions of highlighters that she uses to mark her newspaper with when she reads it. How she surrounds him when they sleep, her solid warmth wrapped all over him. Her laugh and how her eyes crinkle when she smiles. How she hates jelly fish. How she sleeps with a night light.  How she sounds in his ear. All things that he thought he had buried deep and thrown away but they came rushing back like a flood. Like hearing a song you haven’t listened to in forever and just having the words come to you subconsciously.

He hadn’t really forgotten her, he supposes. All things he filed away, but never really forgotten. No, he could never forget MacKenzie.

He hears what sound like talking in the background before he hears _’20 seconds’_ and then-

“Good show, daddy” mumbled into his ear, followed by the little girl telling him  to no let the senator walk all over him. And he has to chuckle, because Stephanie can’t really know what that means and it’s adorable. She must have heard Mac saying it to him many times over the years.

He had found out that they let her stay with them in the office on a Friday, and Mac sometimes allowed her to sit in the control room with her instead of sleeping in one of their offices. Stephanie is allowed to stay up later because it’s Friday and she promises to not make too much noise while Will is on air. Mac and _other_ Will really seemed to have this parenting thing down.

They manage to make it through the broadcast without incident and Will is glad that it was a relatively slow news day. He’s more than ready to crawl into bed and sleep through the weekend. He manages to change in record time and when he comes out of his office, he finds Mac ready and standing with Stephanie, Sloan and a few of the other female staff in the middle of the bullpen. When Stephanie sees him her eyes light up and she drops Macs hand, making a beeline for him.

“Daddy, daddy!” she says as she comes to a halt in front of him, lifting her arms in indication that she wants to be picked up. He acquiesces to her nonverbal request, and picks her up with a slight groan as he feels his elbow protest. Really, he was too old for this life. “We get to have daddy and daughter time!”

He has no idea what she is talking about. “Is that so?” Will asks, while making his way to the group. Its then that he sees that MacKenzie is definitely not dressed to go home. She’s in a tight black dress and leather jacket, with her sky high heels, and she looks amazing!

“You look amazing” tumbles out of his mouth when he gets to her, really of its own accord. “Why so dressed up?”

He sees the slight smirk on Mac’s face when she catches him drinking her in, and he almost looks away and blushes at being caught, but hey he figures he’s allowed to because she’s his wife.

Her smile drops as she processes his words though. “What do you mean why so dressed up? We’re having drinks to celebrate Sloan and Don’s engagement. You have to watch Stephanie tonight; we talked about this, Will”

Watch the kid by himself? He can’t do that! Picking her up from school was one thing, but being in charge of her for hours, on his own? No. no, no, no. “MacKenzie, I don’t think that’s such a good idea”

She shakes her head. “No, I need this, Will. You’ve watched her plenty of times, why should this be any different?”

“I just-” he tries to explain, but she’s not having it.

“You’re her father, Will!” Mac says looking down at where the little girl was now resting her head on his shoulder, watching them with curious eyes. “You’ve been looking after her from the day she was born.”

With that Sloan announces that its time for the girls to head out and have fun like the guys did three nights ago. MacKenzie kisses Stephanie, before kissing him lightly on the lips and moving off with the rest of the group.

As soon as Mac is out of sight, the little girl in his arms looks up at him with a smile. A smile that didn’t look completely innocent.

“It’s just you and me now, daddy!”

“Yeah it is, princess” he says trying not to let the fear show in his voice.  He really hoped that nothing bad would happen while he was watching her tonight.


	6. The Bones You're Made Of

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’s trying to seduce him, he belatedly realises. He’s forgotten how handsy a drunken MacKenzie could be. He’d been so good these past few days, with avoiding too much physical contact with her. Now she was here, it her tight dress, her hands running all over him and he could smell her perfume all around him. It was intoxicating. He didn’t know if he would be able to fend her off when she was like this. He didn’t know if he even wanted to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a little late, but it's here. Plus it features a drunk Mac. Thank you to everyone who is supporting this story! It means so much to me. I hope this chapter brighten up your Monday. Enjoy!

_“You’re in my bones and my blood and my heart, I’d have to tear myself open to let you go.”_ _―_ [ _Cassandra Clare_ ](http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/150038.Cassandra_Clare)

_-_

“Okay” Will says putting Stephanie down on the landing of the second floor of the house. “Time for bed”

They had arrived home a few minutes ago, and Will had instructed her to get her pjs on before he tucked her in. He had no idea how to look after a kid on his own, and he figured that the sooner he got her into bed, the less likely it would be that something could go wrong.

“But daddy” she whines grabbing onto the front of his pants with one small fist. “I’m not sleepy!”

Clearly the little girl had other ideas.

 He wants to reminder her how she had briefly fallen asleep in the car ride home. “You heard what mommy said before we left the office, straight to bed when we get home, Steph” Will admonishes, trying his best to give her a stern look.

As soon as the words are out of his mouth, she has dramatically thrown her body and arms fully around his legs and she looks up at him with her big blue eyes.” But daddy, it’s the weekend and Paddy wants to watch a movie” she pleads tugging on his pants. This is the closest he’s seen her come to a tantrum in the few days he has been here and once again he has no idea how to approach this.

He looks down at his watch and sees that its 9:45. It’s not _that_ late, and he really doesn’t think staying up a little later than usual will do long lasting harm to the kid. Well at least he hopes not. Will also did not want to deal with a full on tantrum from Stephanie, it was late and he just wanted to relax. He figured she wouldn’t last long either, given how droopy her eyelids were (plus she looked really sweet in her pale blue pyjamas, her brown hair in a braid her mother had done upon her request, but it was really the puppy dog eyes that had done him in. Him and MacKenzie in one person was a dangerous combination; with his eyes and Mac’s everything else he really didn’t stand a chance).

“Alright blue eyes, you win” Will says looking down at her “we can watch _one_ movie, then it’s time for bed”.

The little girl squeezes her arms tighter around his legs, with a squeal. “Oh, thank you daddy!” she says jumping up and down on the spot whilst clutching her teddy bear. “You’re the best daddy in the whole wide world!”

He smiles at that and for a second wonders if he should have given in that easily. _Fuck_. He takes one of her little hands in his to stop her from bouncing around, and crouches down to be eye level with her. “But you have to promise to not tell mommy, okay?” He really does not want to incur the wrath of MacKenzie McHale for keeping her kid up past her bed time and ruining her development, or something.

Stephanie just throws a hand over her mouth as she giggles. “You always say that daddy!” and she giggles again “but Paddy and I promise not to tell”

So it seems his counterpart was just a big a pushover when it came to the kid as he was, and really when did he become so soft? “Good” Will says standing up straight again and lifting Stephanie into his arms when she raises her arms in askance to be held.

When they get to the family room she tells Will that she wants to watch a movie called _Frozen_. He just hopes there’s not too much singing in it and he finds the movie and presses play (yes he loves musicals, but not so much in the form of a cartooned kids film).

Within the first five minutes of the movie, he finds that he was very wrong. It was indeed a musical movie (not that she should expect any less out of a Disney film) and apparently Stephanie knew _every single word_. She proceeds to show him how well she knows the movie by singing along and imitating all the moves to the first song about building a snowman (ten minutes later he realises that the pyjamas she’s wearing have the films main character on them and are the same colour as her dress).

It really is adorable to watch and Will can’t help but marvel at her, realising how different their childhoods are. She actively seeks his approval of her singing and dancing, expecting him to clap as her and her stuffed toy sing for him, and how she cuddles up to him less than halfway through the movie, sleepiness getting the better of her. Will can never remember being this free around his own father, too afraid to joke around with him or even think of disobeying him. Stephanie wasn’t afraid of him at all, never thinking for a moment that the father she had known her whole life did anything but adore her. The way she laughed and played showed how she knew she was loved and that she would never be lonely, or want for anything.

 Stephanie trusted her father to always be there; to catch her when she falls and as he watched her drift to sleep slumped against his side, he was happy about that. He was glad that _other_ Will and MacKenzie had made a home for her that was safe and warm and full of love. Beyond all the pain hurt and messy hostility within himself, he feels something warm in his chest every time he looks at her, and especially now where she is cuddled into his side, small and warm, fast asleep clutching her teddy bear.

He feels a small smile tug at his lips at the sight of her, as he stands up and he shifts on the couch so he can gently lift her into his arms. She whimpers slightly as she shifts in her sleep, trying to get comfortable. Will comforts her with a gentle pat on her back as they make their way up the stairs to her bedroom. He gets her tucked in with no problem, remembering to tuck Paddington the bear in with her under the covers.

**

Will wanders back downstairs and potters around the house for a while, having the first opportunity since he has been there to explore the house. It’s a really nice house, he has to admit. It’s a brownstone with four floors. The master bedroom was on the first floor and Stephanie had her room on the floor above. There was a study on the same floor as the main bedroom that appeared to be his. The house was warm and full of light, noting like his cold- glass apartment. He could see MacKenzie’s touches all over, and some of his too. Looking around and being here the past few days, he got this feeling of being home, and somewhere in the back of his mind Will was dreading going back to his own cold, clinical apartment. After all, this little journey or _whatever_ would not last forever. Did he even want it to?

He finds himself back in the living room, where Stephanie’s movie was still playing, when he realises that it’s the first time since he’s been her that he’s really had time to himself. He pulls out the laptop that he found in the study and decides now would be a good time to get to know more about his life here.

Will sifts through the pictures on the computer and finds hundred from the past five years. His and Mac’s courthouse wedding; pictures of her pregnant with Stephanie and smiling with his arms around her protruding stomach. Pictures from Stephanie’s birth, the baby with his family and her family. Them in London with Mac’s siblings, and them on holiday just the two of them somewhere tropical. Him and Mac with the staff in their house celebrating the anniversary of News Night 2.0; his birthday and Mac’s birthday. In all these photos, two things were obvious to him: they were happy and they loved each other. MacKenzie had come into his sad and lonely life and given him a family. In this life, this reality, he wasn’t alone anymore.

Before he can launch a Google search on himself and Mac, he hears the doorbell ring. He swipes a quick glance at his watch and sees that it’s almost midnight. He had been looking at photos for almost two hours.

Will quickly makes his way to the door and when he opens it he’s greeted with Don holding what he assumes to be MacKenzie’s purse, with one hand on her back to steady her. Mackenzie herself is holding her heels in one hand while the other is slung around Don’s neck.

Her eyes light up when she sees him. “Billy!” she exclaims stumbling from Don’s arms into his. He had to move quickly to catch her as she wraps her arms around his neck.

Will looks at Don with raised eyebrows and Don just shrugs. “I think they had a little more fun than we did” Don offers in way of explanation “ Sloan is about in the same condition as Mac” Don points with his thumb to the cab on the sidewalk and he can see Sloan slumped in the back of it.

“Well thanks for bringing her home” Will manages over Mac’s shoulder, who still has her arms wrapped around him.

Don chuckles. “You’ve done the same for Sloan before, so it’s no problem” Don says handing him Mac’s bag and patting her back lightly in a goodbye. “Have a good night you two”

As he turns to walk down the front stairs leading to their home Mac unwraps herself from Wills neck and waves furiously after Don when she realises he’s leaving. “Bye Don!” she exclaims as they watch him get in the cab. “Don. Don, Don, Don” She repeats then turns to Will with furrowed eyebrows. “Do you think he’s happy with that name?”

Will can’t help but chuckle as he pulls her inside. It’s been a while since he’d seen a tipsy Mac. “I think so. Come on let’s get you to bed”

She allows him to help her up the stairs without much difficulty as she mumbles in quite a loud voice about how much fun they had tonight. He tries to get her to keep her voice down, reminding her of the sleeping little girl up stairs.

This causes MacKenzie to gasp and freeze halfway inside the room, slapping a hand over her mouth as if just realising how loud she was being. “The baby! Is she asleep, Billy?”

“Yes, Mac she is. Now we need to get you to bed as well, come on” Will says tugging her inside the room.

Before he can think about helping her get ready for bed she pulls him back to her, running her hands over his chest while looking him over. “You can take me to bed, anytime, McAvoy”

She’s trying to seduce him, he belatedly realises. He’s forgotten how handsy a drunken MacKenzie could be. He’d been so good these past few days, with avoiding too much physical contact with her. Now she was here, it her tight dress, her hands running all over him and he could smell her perfume all around him. It was intoxicating. He didn’t know if he would be able to fend her off when she was like this. He didn’t know if he even wanted to.

She looks at him with soft cloudy eyes. “My Billy, so handsome” she says running a finger over his lower lip, and in the next second before he can react, crashing her lips onto his.

The kiss is hot and slippery, a flurry of tongue and teeth. He moans into her mouth, because as much as he wants to deny it, it feels like coming home. He lips are soft on his and he can feel the gloss she had on rub against his own lips. _Fuck._ He can’t stop, he leans into her more, pulling her flush against his front.

As her hand snakes its way into the front of his sweat pants and over his erection, he immediately remembers where he is and everything that he knows to be true. He remembers her betrayal, and Brian and the email he had tried to read earlier today and he just can’t. He can’t forget, it’s just all too fresh. No matter how much he wants her physically, he just can’t forget the betrayal.

Will gently moves his lips from hers while removing her hand from his pants. She looks up at him with furrowed eyebrows.

“Will?

He gives her a small smile and tries to down play what just happened. “I don’t think you should start something you can’t finish” he says pulling her to her side of the bed and sitting her down.  Will reaches behind her and under her pillow to get her pyjamas.

“I’m fine, honey. Look, I can even sit up on my own”

She sways slightly where she is sitting on the bed and gives a little giggle when he instructs her to get her dress off. Instead of reaching over to unzip her dress she hold her arms out and looks at him with wide, blinking eyes and waiting.

“No Mac, I didn’t say put your arms out, I said take of your dress. You’re not wearing a shirt remember” Will says amusedly.

She looks down at herself as if she had forgotten what she was wearing and giggles again. “Oops, silly Mac” He watches her fumble for a little bit with the zipper of the dress before she huffs and gives up, looking up at him pleadingly. “Help me please”

He swallows hard. It feels like forever since he’s touched her like this. Sure he had seen her naked these past few days but he’d immediately avert his eyes or turn away. He moves a hand to her back and reaches for the zipper. He feels Mac slump against his front with a sleepy sigh as he tugs the zipper down, sweeping her brown hair over one of her shoulders as he does so.  His mind is flooded with memories from long ago, it almost seems like it happened in a lifetime ago. Memories of them like this, hundreds of memories of him helping her out of a dress and into his bed. Memories all burned into his brain.

He can tell that the alcohol is catching up to her as she grows quiet against him, earlier thoughts of seducing him having been forgotten. Will helps her to stand up as he tugs the dress off and she regards him with hooded eyes and a soft sleepy smile. He pulls one of his old t-shirts that she likes to sleep in over her head as quickly as possible; his resolve slipping as he sees her in just her underwear. He pauses though, halfway down her torso when he sees the discoloured, smooth patch of skin on the left side of her abdomen, above her hip bone.

First he thinks that maybe it’s from when she gave birth to Stephanie but then it hits him. It’s from the stabbing. The scar is puckered out and smooth, a couple of inches long. He can’t help but gently reach out and run his forefinger lightly along it.

She almost _died_.

Mac gives a small giggle and pulls her hand into his before flopping down onto the bed.  “That Tickles”.

That snaps him out of his daze and he pulls her feet up onto the bed before pulling the overs back and getting her under them. He tries to push down the wave of guilt he felt at the sight of her scar; too many feelings already swimming around in his chest.

Once she’s under the covers she regards him with a sleepy smile and runs a hand through his hair as her tucks the blankets around her.

“I fell in love with you too, you know that?” she says her words slurring slightly from exhaustion and alcohol.

“What?” Will says stilling his movements and sitting himself on the side of the bed, facing her.

“Before. Last night, you said I lied but I fell in love with you too after being with him again. I don’t know if I haven’t made this clear enough but I didn’t know how I felt about you until I was with him again “ she says burrowing into her pillow, her words muffled and seemingly half asleep. Her eyes pop open again “he was an asshole and you were- are perfect, even though you’ve been keeping secrets from me the past few days. I fell in love with _you_ Billy, always remember that. Then I never saw that douche bag again. Don’t ever forget that because it seems like for the past few days, you have”

He doesn’t know what to say. He wants to ask her why she had told him about Brian all those years ago; why she couldn’t have just kept it to herself. He never would have found out, they never would have broken up and she wouldn’t have almost died in a warzone. He wouldn’t have to live with it. But she’s half asleep, it’s late and she’s a bit drunk. Now’s not the time to have this conversation.

She’s gone quiet and he thinks she may have fallen asleep when she blinks her eyes open. “Can you get me some water, honey?”

He nods, getting off the bed and running downstairs to get her some water and some Advil too. When he returns he finds her softly snoring, and spread out on her stomach. He doesn’t have the heart to wake her so he just leaves the things on her night stand. Will quickly changes into his pyjamas and slips into the bed. MacKenzie curls herself into him as soon as he’s close enough mumbling his name.

He can still feel the ghost of her lips on his. _Fuck fuck fuck_. How long had he worked to bury that feeling of her lips? He could feel everything he had tried to forget resurfacing again. Everything. How she laughed, show she smelled, how she slept, how she ate, looked in the morning, how she felt, everything. Including how he felt about her, how much he had loved her. He would be a liar to deny it.

Every hour he spent here, with her, was another chip away at the wall he had built around his heart.


	7. Love, I Have Wounds Only You Can Mend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And it’s wonderful. Everything is warms and light and just wonderful. They eat and are full, burrowing back down into the blankets with a laughing Stephanie between them and Will honestly has a hard time remembering why he was holding onto all the anger and hurt from the past, when he could have all of this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Halfway mark! Thank you to everyone who continues to support this story! Now that we're halfway in we're starting to see this other world having an impact on Will as he gets closer and closer to what he's looking for. Enjoy!

_“Oh the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts or measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take them and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away”_ \- Gorge Elliot.

-

The weekend dawns warm and bright for Will.

Its summer and the sunlight is streaming in through the curtains and casting the room in a soft glow, and everything seems still and slow for the time being.

He wakes up on Saturday morning with MacKenzie draped half on top of him, with her face pressed into the dip of his neck and her dark hair fanned out over her back. One of her hands is under his shirt, slung across his stomach and one of the first things he’s aware of as he leaves the fuzziness of sleep, is how warm her finger tips are against the planes of his stomach.

Will can’t help the groan that escapes his mouth as he tries to shift his sleep-stiff limbs, slightly jerking Mac, causing her to moan and burrow further into his arms. He just lays there for a bit and takes it all in. It’s been years since he’s woken up with anybody on a weekend. He always loved that time with MacKenzie; they would sleep till late watching the weekend roundtables, share food and kisses and sometimes not even get out of bed. Other times they would explore the city or try new restaurants. The weekends were the days he missed her most.

So for a minute he just allows himself to lie still, with her curled all around him. Its soft and warm and wonderful, he has to admit. He allows himself to touch her as well, running his fingers lightly through her hair, shifting it out of her face and then down her soft neck, collarbones and arms. He can’t help himself. He’s spent too many lonely Saturdays and Sundays without her, so he’ll allow himself this.

He cranes his neck slightly to look at the clock on Mac’s side and he sees that it’s almost eight in the morning. He’s slightly surprised that Stephanie hasn’t come bursting into the room yet, as kids aren’t generally known for sleeping in. In any case, he’s thankful for this quiet moment with Mac. He stays still for a few more minutes before deciding to get up and make breakfast. He’s getting hungry and he figures Mac will need a big breakfast after last night (he can also see that she must have gotten up at some point during the night and downed the water because the glass sits empty on her night stand).

Will manages to unwrap himself from Mac and make his way downstairs to the kitchen. He’s glad that no one else is awake as he fumbles around the kitchen looking for cooking utensils.  He doesn’t know where anything is, so at least he’s alone and can take time to familiarise himself with it.

Just as he’s finished gathering everything to make the blueberry pancakes (that he remembers were Mac’s favourite) he sees little Stephanie stumbling into the kitchen, still half asleep and rubbing her eyes, her ever faithful teddy bear in her arms. She walks right up to where he’s standing over the stove top and knocks her head into his leg before looking up at him wither bright blue eyes.

“Good morning, Stephanie” He greets, letting one of his hands pat down her sleep mussed hair.

“Mornin” she mumbles for her position leaning up against his leg, her head peaking up only slightly to try see over the counter. “Where’s mommy?”

Will shifts his gaze from the pancake batter for a second to look down at her. “She’s still sleeping”

The little girl pulls back from him slightly. “I think it’s time for her to get up now”

Will catches her around the waist before she can turn around and make a beeline up the stairs. “No, no, don’t do that. Your mommy’s got a hangover and needs the sleep”

The little girl scrunches up her face at his words but doesn’t try squirm out of his grasp. “What’s a hand-over?”

“ _Hang_ over” Will corrects automatically before realising that he probably shouldn’t be teaching the kid words like that. He quickly takes her into his arms to distract her before she can ask him about it again. “How about, you help me make mommy breakfast?”

She perks up immediately at this, her earlier grogginess forgotten. “Yes please, daddy! It’s the most funnest when you let me help you”

He sets her on the counter, far enough away from the hot pan so that she won’t get hurt. He’s never cooked with a child before so he’s not really sure what he should and shouldn’t allow her to do. Will settles on letting her stir the batter one last time before he scoops the mixture onto the pan.

She giggles as she watches the little air bubbles appear on the pancake and she talks animatedly to her teddy, asking him if he can see how well she is cooking.

“Here” Will says handing her a few blueberries “you can drop these on before we flip it over”

Again she seems thrilled at this. He likes how she is made happy with the simplest of things; watching a movie with him, going to the park or even them cooking together. He’s glad that he gets to experience the world through her eyes for a short time. He’s been a cynic and angry for so long that he’s forgotten how to take pleasure in the little things.

He watches her closely making sure she never gets too close to the hot surface, and notes how she giggles every time she drops in the berries and looks up at him for his approval. There’s a warmth in his chest and a fondness at the sight of her. He can’t help but think that if he were to ever have children, he wouldn’t mind if they turned out like her. In fact she was probably the best possible outcome for any of his progeny ( he ignores the fact, of course, that MacKenzie would have to be the mother of said children if he wanted them to be or look anything like Stephanie).

“Okay kid” he says plating the last pancake. “It’s time for the bacon now”

He makes sure she stays a good distance away while he cooks the bacon. There’s oil flying around and he really doesn’t want to have a crying four year old on his hands but she is her mother’s daughter. He sees her inching closer when she thinks he’s not looking, until he eventually lifts her off the counter and sets her on her feet.

She shoots him a glare that can only be described as very McAvoy-esque and he has to resist the urge to laugh. “But daddy, I was helping!”

He shakes his head. “Nope, this is too dangerous for little people” he plates the bacon soon after “Anyway, everything is done now”

“Can I go wake mommy up now?” she asks hopefully.

Will looks around, considering it for a moment. The kitchen was huge, with a breakfast nook off in the corner that was bathed in the summer light, overlooking their small back yard, so they could eat there. Then he remembers Mac’s warm body pressed up against him this morning and he wouldn’t mind going back to _that._

“How about we bring mommy breakfast in bed? You think she’d like that?”

Stephanie jumps up and down on the spot, nodding her head exaggeratedly like small children tend to do “Yep!”

He manages to find a breakfast tray and piles all the food on there, and he and Stephanie make their way up to the first floor (with little Stephanie carrying a bowl of strawberries after she insisted that she also wanted to carry something).

Will pushes the door open with his hip and lets Stephanie run in.

“Mommmmyyy!” she bellows at the top of her lungs while racing towards the bed “wake up!” She sets the bowl of strawberries down on his nightstand with a clutter before lifting herself onto the bed. She crawls under the sheets and over to her mother.

MacKenzie groans awake and throws an arm over the little girl pulling her closer to her warmth. She leans down and kisses the top of Stephanie’s head. “Good Morning” she mumbles with a hoarse voice.

Will smiles as he looks on her. Her hair is a mess and she looks as if she would prefer to stay asleep forever. He sets the tray on the nightstand before sliding back into bed. “Good morning, how are you feeling?”

Mac groans again in response. “I’m never drinking again. Don’t ever let Sloan talk me into doing that many shots ever again!”

“Well we brought you breakfast, if that will help” he says with a laugh, leaning over to place the tray between them, a little further down from where Stephanie was sitting.

Mac lifts her head and peers over into the tray. “Mmmmh, blueberry pancakes, my favourite”

“Me and Paddington helped, mommy!”

“You did?” MacKenzie replies as she sits up in bed lifting the little girl with her. “Wow! No wonder it looks so good!”

Stephanie gives her mother a huge smile while nodding. They eventually all settle down in the covers and eat their breakfast. Halfway through Stephanie shakes Will’s arm and asks him if they can watch _Doc McStuffins_ ( whatever that was) on Disney channel and they end up watching that and more Saturday morning  cartoons in bed.

And it’s wonderful _._ Everything is warms and light and just _wonderful_. They eat and are full, burrowing back down into the blankets with a laughing Stephanie between them and Will honestly has a hard time remembering why he was holding onto all the anger and hurt from the past, when he could have all of _this_. It’s a difficult thing to admit to himself, and he knows that he’s eventually going to have to answer those questions. It was so easy to forget all the terrible stuff that had happened between them in times like this, so he does. He instead focuses on living in the moment. He focuses on the little girl’s laughter and MacKenzie’s soft breathing when she falls asleep again.

 

**

They do eventually make it out of bed when Mac feels less like her head is pounding. The sun is bright in the cloudless sky, the heat is bearable and Stephanie begs them to go to the park. Considering their house is quite close to central park, they agree.

They walk leisurely with their hands linked, Stephanie in between them swinging both their hands back and forth while talking a mile a minute about everything she’d learnt at school that week. MacKenzie laughs when Stephanie drops their hands as soon as they reach the playground and Will keeps his eyes on her the whole time. Mac catches him staring throughout the afternoon, blushing when their eyes meet. _The most beautiful woman he has ever seen in real_ _life_. Its flirty looks and subtly brushing against each other the whole day, venom less quips and quick retorts are exchanged and it almost feels like before; before the pain and the horrible thing that she did.

For the first time in a long time, when he looks at her he doesn’t see the image of her and Brian that’s been living in his head.  Instead he sees her as she is now; laughing and happy and _grounded_.

There was still so much he needed to work through with her before he could truly say that he had moved on. Maybe that was the whole reason he was here?

He decides that he’ll tell Mac _everything._ It’s the only way he can really understand why she did what she did and they can move forward. He would tell her who he was and about every insanely weird thing that has happened to him in the past few days and he hopes she doesn’t think he is crazy.

He hopes she understands.

For now though, he would just enjoy the weekend with her. As he watched her and Stephanie laugh while Mac pushed her on the swing, he sees what his life _could_ be. He sees his future.


	8. That's how I got to Memphis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What is it?” He asks and sees Mac stand up as well.
> 
> “Stephanie’s nanny just called and neither of you are answering your phones. There’s been an accident”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Sunday! I hope this brightens up your day. Enjoy and thank you for reading!

_“I love her and that is the beginning of everything”- F. Scott Fitzgerald_

\--

He remembers the day when he met MacKenzie in late 2004 extremely clearly. She came into his life like a whirlwind and he really hadn’t been the same again.

He had been a legal correspondent for CNN, ACN and a few other shows before he got his own show and became a full-fledged anchor. He was first recommended for the position of legal correspondent by a friend of his who worked in television. Will had been working as a lawyer ever since he was in his twenties and he was just looking for a new challenge, something different in life.

For as long as he could remember, Will had always wanted to help people. He didn’t know if it was a result of watching his father hurt his mother and siblings, and having the legal system fail them and wanting better for himself, for them. He worked harder and did better, so that his siblings didn’t have to. He pushed himself so that he could make things better for them. He had to step up and protect them when his father didn’t. He was the oldest, so he always just felt like it was his _duty_.

So maybe, becoming a lawyer and a prosecutor was not something that he really chose but he had enjoyed it. He was one of the good guys and he had a 95% conviction rate so he had done pretty well for himself.  Journalism on the other hand, was what he chose when the opportunity presented itself, when he was ready for something new. He met Charlie on 9/11 when he had just been on T.V for a few months and that night was really the first time that he really got to do the news. Will loved it and his career had just snowballed form there.

He met MacKenzie when he was on a panel for the primetime spot at CNN where she was a Senior Producer. He remembers that day so clearly, when she had com into the dressing room to make sure that he was prepped and ready. Sure, he had heard of her: this idealistic producer, quickly moving her way up the ranks at CNN and he had seen her picture and seen some of the stuff she had produced but he had never spoken to her or seen her in person. The moment he had seen her in person, he was done for.

She was extraordinarily beautiful. The most beautiful woman he had seen in real life, with her shoulder length brown her and piercing gaze. Her eyes crinkled at the corners as she reached out her hand and shook his.

_“Hi, I’m Mac McHale” she had said in her strong accent and all he could think was how lovely she sounded and that she was British._

_“You’re British?” he finds himself blurting out to her._

_She narrows her eyes, but looks slightly amused and vehemently shakes her head. “No actually, I’m American. Born and raised her for the first few years of my life then I went back to England for the rest of my schooling. Anyway” she said waving her hands slightly. “You don’t need to hear all that. Are you ready?”_

He had always considered himself to be quite smooth when it came to the opposite sex but she came and stole all his cool reducing him to a bumbling schoolboy. His first interaction with her and it had not gone as well as expected.

That was in late 2004 and he had asked her out after the show. It turned out that she had gotten out of a serious relationship not long ago, with some guy who worked for Newsweek, so they had become friends. They had fierce debates about everything from foreign policy, to his choice in political party and her seemingly peculiar fear of jellyfish.  It seemed like she lived to disagree with him and make him question everything that he believed. He fell for her quickly while she was just his friend and he was the guy who occasionally came on her show, until one day in 2005 when she kissed him after a few drinks and told Will to ask her out again.

Hi did.

He had never believed in love. In had in part to do with his parents’ marriage, because he was sure that if that’s what love did to you then he wanted no part in it. They had been happy once, his parents. Before the four children and the problems on the farm. They had loved each other and his childhood wasn’t always bad but as things got worse on the farm his father drank more and love couldn’t help him.

When he had met Mac, he was in his mid-40s and he figured that that love just wasn’t for him. He had been in many relationships at that point and he could honestly say he had never been in love before and at his age he didn’t really see it happening. He had been okay with that.

Then she came. MacKenzie came and turned his whole world upside down and completely overshadowed every other woman for him. She was it and he knew he would never love anyone else like he loved her ever again. He had already fallen before he even knew he was floating in an ocean of _her_.

He was happy. He eventually got his own show at 4 PM and that allowed him to see Mac more and committed him to moving to D.C.  He remembers those early months so clearly, thinking that the way his heartbeat picked up whenever she was near would eventually wear off with time, but it didn’t. He grew to love her more than he knew what to do with and he knew that she was it. MacKenzie was going to be his wife. Then CNN offered him his own show at ten with MacKenzie McHale as his executive producer, and from that moment he was just trying to figure out when the best time would be to propose.

 The she told him about Brian and sent him sinking, drowning in his own memories, pain and her betrayal. He had known pain pretty much all his life; from his father’s fists to being body slammed in football, but nothing could have prepared him for the pain he felt when she confessed. It was a pain that now followed him around and marked his life.

She pulled the rug out from under him and Will’s been looking to something to hold onto ever since. It feels like he’s been drowning in his past and his own pain since she broke his heart. It all swirls around and plays in his head constantly. He dissects it all; every kiss, every smile and every whispered promise; every day. This is what he finds himself thinking on when Sunday rolls around. Every little thing that led to him being _here_ now. He just wants to find solid ground.

Sunday seems them lazily pottering around the house, with stolen looks and shared smiles. He spends the day working up the courage to tell her everything that’s been happening in the past week but the words keep dying on his tongue. He doesn’t know how or where to begin and she knows something is up. He disappeared to his study at some point just to clear his mind, until Stephanie had rushed in declaring that he was invited to her Princess Tea Party.

It was entirely too adorable for words, with her making Will wear a tiara and reminding him to keep his pinkie up while he sipped his tea.

_“It’s how they drink tea where grandma and grandad are from, daddy!”_

It helped distract him from his worries for a while, and Mac wasn’t in the room looking at him with her questioning gaze. The intimacy of this whole weekend had thrown him off, stopped his anger right in its tracks. He was still hurt of course, but the anger that had previously ruled his life just did not seem as important anymore. Not when he was looking at this little girl, who talked animatedly to her stuffed animals as if they were alive, who quoted her mother in every other sentence and obviously idolized her father. No, he couldn’t hold onto that. It just seemed so irrelevant in the face of everything that he had experienced in the last few days.

His fate had been sealed long before this strange journey he was on. From the day he chose to fall in love with MacKenzie _this._ As he looked at the laughing child in front of him he knew that this was the only way he could allow this story to end. It all made sense intellectually, and he understood that he could be happy if he just _stopped,_ if he just let go of past and forgave her but it was just… difficult. One part of him longed to have her back and forgive her and then there was the part that his past had made him; unforgiving and doubting. That seemed to be his default since Mac left. It seemed like every time MacKenzie would break through there was always a voice in his head ready to remind him that she could not be trusted.

He was fighting himself and in many ways he was fighting a losing battle.

\--

Now it was Monday and he still couldn’t find the right words. MacKenzie follows him into his office when they get to work and plops down at the table in his office, pulling out her newspapers and reading glasses. _Oh._

He’s never seen her with glasses on; she hadn’t needed them the first time around.

“Those look good on you” He finds himself saying. He’s cataloguing it all, every new way he has seen her in the past few days, updating everything he keeps stored about her in his mind.

She looks up from her paper and quirks and eyebrow at him before giving a small laugh. “Thanks”

He thinks now would be the perfect time to tell her what’s going through his mind. “Hey Mac, I-” is all he manages before Jim pushes open his door (do people just not knock on his door anymore?) with report in his hands.

“Good, you’re both in” He says before prattling off about whatever was written on the papers in his hands.

Will sighs and does his best to listen to Jim’s words. It’s going to be a long day.

 

After the first rundown he follows Mac to her office determined to finally spill the beans. He fumbles with his words before Mac finally throws up her hands as she plops down at her desk.

“Good grief man, out with it already!”

Will just looks at her slightly startled.

“You obviously have something you’ve wanted to tell me the whole weekend but you keep backing out, and honestly it’s getting ridiculous now-”

“I let Stephanie stay up late on Friday night after the show” He blurts out, feeling his cheeks redden as he awkwardly scratches his head.

She laughs and narrows her eyes at him. “Is that all you wanted to tell me?”

He shrugs because this conversation is not going as planned.

“Well I can’t say I’m surprised, since you let her do that pretty much every Friday”

“How did you know that?”

Mac chuckles. “Will, she just turned four, she’s not that great at keeping secrets and it slipped.” Will smiles slightly to himself because he should have known that Mac would probably have found out. She’s entirely too smart “besides, you never have been very good at denying her much of anything”

She regards him with a warm look as she says that, obviously not angry at all, and he thinks the part of him that wants to forgive her is winning. How could it not when she’s looking at him like that?

\--

During the 4 P.M rundown and he finds himself watching her again. She’s not even standing in front, Jim is and he knows that he should be paying attention because the growing unrest in Iraq and the U.S military airstrikes were going to be the entire A-Block. He still hadn’t managed to find the right words the entire day and Mac knows something is up, although she’s not pushing him. She had gone to pick Stephanie up from Pre-K and they all had lunch together before Amy (the nanny) had picked her up and taken her home.

He’s still distracted when his Jenna burst through the glass door looking between him and Mac.  The meeting has effectively stopped and everyone has turned to look at her quizzically. She looks slightly frazzled, and this causes him to stand up and walk to her.

“What is it?” He asks and sees Mac stand up as well.

“Stephanie’s nanny just called and neither of you are answering your phones. There’s been an accident”


	9. This Is Where I Sleep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their kiss is hot and wet and a mess of teeth and lips. Her hands are now buried in his hair and he feels like she’s all around him; in his senses, buried in his bones, written in his blood. It’s where she had always lived- she had never left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I thought I would try post earlier in the week than my usual Sunday schedule because I have something planned for Fathers Day. This chapter is extra long and one heck of a roller-coaster ride. It was quite a challenge to write and I hope you all enjoy it, it's what we've all been waiting for.
> 
> Please Note: The rating changes to Mature halfway through this chapter.

 

_“_ _Love is a temporary madness; it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is…Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away.”-_[ _Louis de Bernières_](http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2313.Louis_de_Berni_res) _,_  [ _Captain Corelli's Mandolin_](http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2771048)

_-_

 

Will is out of the conference room before Jenna even completes her sentence. He hates hospitals and just the thought of Stephanie being hurt in some way gets his heat racing.  His own childhood injuries swirling in his mind. He hates hospitals. He hears that word and can’t help but think the worst.

He sees Mac stay and talk to Jenna while he rushes to his office and gets his things.  She comes charging into his office a few minutes later, calling out to him be he doesn’t stop gathering his things.

She eventually comes around his desk and grips his forearms to get him to stop moving. “Billy, she’s alright” Mac says rubbing up and down his arms gently.

“How do you know that? We have to go Mac, we won’t know until we’ve seen her ourselves” Will says trying to move away from her. Why was she so calm about this?

“Will, Amy is taking her to the E.R now. She thinks Stephanie might have broken her arm” She says holing tight “She’s okay, Billy. Just breathe”. He’ll breathe when he sees that she’s okay with his own eyes but he nods. Mac gives his arms a squeeze before dropping her hands to his and giving them a light squeeze. “Let me get my bag and then we can leave”

She slips her hand into his as they exit the office and he’s glad to have her by his side. One of them needs to be level headed and right now it doesn’t look like it’s going to be him. Their hands stay locked together until they get to Mount Sinai and a triage nurse is leading them to the bed where Stephanie was moved to wait for a doctor to come and examine her. One of the few times that his fame and connections really come in handy and Will was glad that he had friend at the hospital meaning that Stephanie didn’t have to wait long to be seen.

 The nurse leads them to the bed and Will spots Stephanie immediately. She looks too small in the large hospital bed with her left arm propped up by pillows, and the little girl quietly sniffling while holding onto her Nanny’s hand with her uninjured one.

“Oh my baby” MacKenzie says dropping his hand and rushing to her side when they are close enough to Stephanie’s bed. Amy stands up from the uncomfortable looking hospital chair when she sees them approaching.

The little girl lifts her head when she sees her parents, wetness collecting in her eyes. “Mommy! Daddy!” she drops Amy’s hand and holds hers out to her mother.

Mac rushes forward and embraces her daughter, careful not to disturb her clearly swollen arm. “Hello my darling, are you alright?” Mac says gently pushing Stephanie’s fringe out of her eyes and looking her over.

As Will moves to stand on the other side of the bed, he finds himself also looking her over. Her face is stained with dry tear streaks and her purple tights have dirt on them. Her left arm is clearly injured, with a purple-ish bruise forming on her small wrist. Other than that there did not appear to be any life threatening injuries.

Will felt himself release a breath now that he is able to see her in person with his own eyes. The tightening panic in his chest releases slightly and he runs a hand over her hair.  “Hi princess”

“Hi” she says with another sniffle. “I hurted my arm” the little girl says looking between him and Mac.

Mac quiets her and plants a few more kisses to the top of her head before turning to Amy, as if just noticing she’s in the room. “Oh my word Amy, I just completely ignored you. Sorry!”. She leans over and gives Amy a hug without letting go of her daughter’s hand.

“No, it’s totally okay” Amy says looking between them. “I can imagine how scared you must have bee-”

“What happened?” he asks cutting her off, unable to keep the edge out of his voice. He couldn’t help it. She was supposed to be watching over _his_ kid and yet this happened. And he had seen her credentials; other Will had been more than thorough when choosing someone to look after his child. She had a degree in child psychology and was trained in first aid.

“Will” Mackenzie says sending him a waring glare. “She’s a child, these things happen”

Amy looks slightly startled at the tone of his voice and he remembers that he can be quite intimidating when he wants to be. He needs to get hold of his anger.

“She fell off the monkey bars at the park. We decided to stop by the park after we came from ACN” she explains “and when I told Stephanie that it was time to go and as I turned around to pack up our stuff she ran off to the monkey bars by herself, saying she wanted to show me how good she was”

MacKenzie turns back to look down at the little girl. “Stephie, we’ve told you not to do the monkey bars without a grown up near. It’s dangerous.”

The little girl for her part looks down guiltily mumbling “But I wanted to show Amy how good I can do it now”

“Well, I called out to her as I turned around after packing up and she was already on the bars. She turned around at the sound of my voice as she was swinging from bar to bar so her hand slipped while the other was mid-air. She broke he fall with her hand and landed on her wrist”

Will turns back to Stephanie and looks down at her hand. It does look pretty bad, but at least there are no bones sticking out. “Yeah well next time, please don’t describe it as an _accident_ on the phone; I almost had a heart attack” he says running a hand down his face and pinching the bridge of his nose.

Amy looks guilty “I’m sorry about that. I think I freaked out a little when I called your assistant. Steph wouldn’t stop crying. I’m so sorry about everything. I turned away for just a second”

MacKenzie puts comforting hand on her arm, while shaking her head. “Please don’t be, it wasn’t your fault. We’ve told her a million times not to climb without us but she does it anyway. It could have happened to either one of us”

“Daddy” Stephanie says calling their attention to her “my arm hurts”

“Did they give her something for the pain?” MacKenzie asks.

Amy nods. “It should have kicked in by now”

Will leans down close to her and finds himself planting a kiss on her forehead. “I know princess but can you be a big girl for me? Just for a little longer” He says wiping the tear that rolls down her cheek as she nods.” Then daddy will get you whatever you want.”

The little girl perks up at that and pain momentarily forgotten, she smiles. “Even a puppy?”

Will nods. He just wants to make her feel better. “Anything you want”

“Will!” MacKenzie admonishes, glaring at him “We’ve discussed this! We’re going to wait until she’s a little older!”

The doctor comes around soon after that and sends them off for X-rays, confirming that Stephanie has indeed broken her wrist. It’s a clean break though and a fairly routine procedure to reset the bone and put the cast on. By the time they are putting the cast on; Mac has finally convinced a guilt-ridden Amy to go home. Stephanie opts to have him hold her hand while they put the plaster on (from her knuckles to just below her elbow) and MacKenzie takes that time to fill out the necessary medical forms.

Will is glad that they give Stephanie something for the pain when he sees how painful it lookswhen the doctor resets the bone it. Apparently broken bones from monkey bars are quite common according to their doctor, and he supposes it’s a comfort to hear but he still doesn’t like that it happened to Stephanie.

The kid opts for a shockingly bright yellow cast (which he learns is her favourite colour) and ends up falling asleep in his arms as soon as they are done with the cast. He breathes in her strawberry smelling hair and wonders when his heart will go back to beating normally. Will chuckles slightly to himself when he thinks back on how he had told himself not to get too attached to the child currently snuggled in his arms.

_Well, that ship has sailed._

**

When they finally arrive home, Stephanie has awoken from her nap and it’s nearing seven. They had decided to let Sloan fill in for him with Jim as her EP. Neither one of them was in the right frame of mind to do the show.

Stephanie talks animatedly to her grandparents over the phone because some pictures of them in the hospital had been leaked to the press and both their families had called or texted to find out if everything was okay. Stephanie tells them how brave she was and has MacKenzie text a picture of her cast covered arm to her cousins in Nebraska and in England.

Will manages to whip up Stephanie’s favourite meal of macaroni and cheese and they end up watching _Frozen_ instead of _News Night._ The pain medication the doctor prescribed hits her hard though and her eyes start to drop halfway through the movie.

“Okay” MacKenzie declares when Stephanie stifles another yawn,” time for bed.”

Will knows she must be really tired because she doesn’t put up a fight to her mother’s instruction. Instead she just holds out her arms for Mac to pick her up and lays her head on her shoulder. She doesn’t even demand a story when they eventually get her tucked in.

“All snug?” MacKenzie asks as she makes sure that Paddington is properly tucked in.

Stephanie nods. “Mommy? Daddy?” she calls out looking up at them. He had just been hanging back and watching the whole scene with a soft smile.

“Yeah?” Will says stepping forward and leaning on the side of the bed next to Mac.

“I know what I want more than a puppy”

He can tell by Mac’s pointed glare that she had really hoped that Stephanie had forgotten about that.

“What’s that?” He asks trying to avoid Mac’s eyes.

“I want a baby sister”

He doesn’t know how to respond to that so he just looks to MacKenzie with pleading eyes to help him. Did Mac and _other_ Will even want more kids?

“Daddy and I will talk about it, okay? But for now you have to go to sleep, my little monkey” MacKenzie leans in and rubs her nose against Stephanie’s causing her to giggle. Mac gestures for him to kiss the child before she does the same and they quietly tip toe out of the room, Stephanie already knocked out even before they flip off the lights (leaving the night light on of course).

When they get to their bedroom he collapses heavily on the edge of the bed, letting out a huge sigh. He closes his eyes and lays his head in his head in his hands, while leaning forward .

“I feel like I can breathe for the first time since this afternoon” Will mumbles from between his hands “Does this feeling ever go away?”

Mac gives a short laugh. “No. I’m pretty sure it only gets worse when they eventually grow up and move away and you can’t keep them in your sight 24/7”

He can hear her moving around the room, but he’s so tired he can’t bring himself to lift his head out of his hands. He just groans in response. He doesn’t think he’s ever been so scared in his life. He really doesn’t know how parents do it.

“Oh god, don’t even remind me” He lifts his head from his hands and opens his eyes to find Mac slipping on a long pair of pyjama pants  and an old t-shirt, before disappearing into the bathroom.

Then the next thing he knows she’s standing in front of him, her face scrubbed clean of makeup and freshly moisturised; and for some reason it feels like forever since they’ve been alone.  He can see her studying him as she steps between his open legs. His hands find their way to her waist of their own accord and her hand slips into his hair, presumably smoothing down his cowlick.

It’s all the soft touches and teasing from the weekend but somehow this feels more intimate.  He couldn’t imagine going back to his own reality, not now. It’s different now and maybe it’s been this way since he arrived but he’s just now noticing. He couldn’t deny it any longer. Just like with Stephanie, he’d been trying to keep his distance, trying not to get caught up in her, in _this_. In this life they had created.

He had to tell her. He was so emotionally raw from this afternoon and he couldn’t keep it in any longer.

He kisses the wrist of the hand that’s still buried in his hair and stands up. “You asked me a few days ago what I’ve been keeping from you” he says looking down into her unsure eyes. “I want to tell you…I just- I just don’t know how”

“Oh Billy” she says gently, cupping his cheek and looking up at him (he always forgets how much shorter she is than him when she’s not in heels). “Try. Just try”

“I’ve-” he pauses and takes a breath. “I’ve forgotten everything about us” he attempts “Well, I suppose that’s not really true”. He looks past her shoulder to the picture of her and _other_ Will on the mantle of the fire place in the room. “I’m not him MacKenzie”

“What do you mean?” she asks dropping her hand off his cheek and following his line of sight to the picture. He suspects though, that she knows what he means, that she’s known for a while now.

“You’ve known since that first day when I jumped out of bed like a crazy person and I missed the rundown meeting. You knew something was off”

She nods, turning back to him. “When you swore in front of Stephanie, I remember”

“And I tried to fight it, you know” he says, eyes still firmly locked on the picture.

“Fight what?”

“This” he says finally tearing his eyes from the picture to look at her and gesturing between them. “Us”

“Who are you?” she asks and grabs her hand in his and again, Will thinks she knows the answer to her own question. _Not her husband._

“I’m not him” he says again dejectedly.

“Then tell me who you _think_ you are!” she pleads again her soft hands coming up to frame his face. “Please. I’ll believe you, I promise”

They were so close that he could feel her hot tuffs of breath on his skin. “I’m the guy you left behind when you went to a warzone, Mac. I’m the one who the staff is afraid of, who drinks too much, the one who does whole segments on the weather and doesn’t open his heart up to anyone! I’m the guy who never thought he’d see you again, let alone find himself married to you!” he spills it all out, gripping the tops of her arms in his hands” I’m not him MacKenzie”

She’s silent for a minute and the only sound in the room is their harsh breathing. She’s searching his face, searching his eyes. She’s always been able to read him so well.

“But you are him!” she finally whispers back. “Don’t you see? The way you were so gentle with Stephanie today in the hospital and on the weekend. The way you took care of me when I had a hangover and brought me breakfast in bed! That’s the man I love, that’s you!” she shouts laying her palms flat on his chest. “You may not think it, but you and he are the same person”

“But I don’t remember any of it, MacKenzie! Not marrying you, not Stephanie’s birth, not going to see you after you had been stabbed. I remember none of it!” He turns away from her then. “How can I be him?”

“Do you love me?” she chokes out from behind him and he doesn’t have to look back at her to know that she’s trying to hold back tears.

“What?” he grounds out but doesn’t turn around. He wasn’t expecting that. Will thought Mac would think he was crazy and try to have him committed.

“You heard me. Do you love me? Do you love that little girl asleep upstairs?” He doesn’t say anything for a long time because that’s the question he has avoided asking himself since he’s been here. “Well do you?” Mac prods when met with his silence. “And don’t lie to me, Will. I’ve seen the way you are with her-”

“Yes!” he cuts her off, suddenly turning back to her. “Of course I love her! How could I not, when she’s the best parts of both of us?”. His own reply surprises him. It’s automatic and instinctual. He doesn’t even have to think about it. He loves that little girl, today had proven that.

“And me?” she prods refusing to break eye contact.

“Yes” Will says, softening his voice as she steps closer to him and closes the gap between them. Then it hits him. Realisation dawns both suddenly and slowly at the same time. It’s her. _It’s always been her_. “I’ve never stopped loving you MacKenzie. Not for one second. Even when we were thousands of miles apart and you thought that I hated you, I never stopped. Never”

It’s always been her. Even when he didn’t realise it. And in that moment he gets why in the last few days it had felt like the past and the hurt didn’t matter. _He_ could choose to move on and be happy or hold onto something that happened years ago and be miserable. He could choose all of _this_. He could choose her and… and except for the things that she did wrong, she did everything right, too. _The rest was him._

She’s on him in the next second, her lips crashing into his. Once he gets over the initial shock of it, he kisses her back with all that he has, sliding his tongue into her mouth, seeking hers. Their kiss is hot and wet and a mess of teeth and lips. Her hands are now buried in his hair and he feels like she’s all around him; in his senses, buried in his bones, written in his blood. It’s where she had always lived- she had never left. _MacKenzie._

He pulls back from the kiss when the need for air becomes too overwhelming, instead placing wet kisses from her chin to her neck. When he funds her pulse point, he latches his lips onto it, sucking hard. Mac moans into his ear, pressing her body even closer to his. She uses the hand still in his hair to direct his mouth back to hers and he happily complies, days of pent up sexual frustration finally boiling over. He could spend the rest of his life just kissing her and he’s convinced this must be heaven.

It’s his turn to moan into her mouth when she grinds herself into the budge in his pants. His hands find the bottom of her pyjama top and seek out the soft skin underneath, teasing and touching. He’s missed her so much; too fucking much. Will honestly doesn’t know how he survived for so long without _this._

Their hands make quick work of each other’s clothes and he honestly doesn’t know how they do it because he doesn’t remember his lips leaving hers for even a second. When there’s nothing separating them and she’s laying on her back with her head propped up on pillows, in the middle of the bed; he’s finally able to take her all in.

His eyes sweep up her body, from the bottom of her feet to her face. She’s watching him with hooded eyes, her dark eyes clouded over with want. When he can no longer just stand to look, he moves to cover every inch of her with his lips. He leaves marks on her collar bones, just below where he knows her blouse will cover (something for only them to know). By the time he’s teased her nipples to stiff peaks, she’s grinding against his leg, hot and wet. He’s never been so turned on in his life and he can feel his erection pressing into her thigh, and honestly if she keeps making those breathy little moans while writhing up against him, he’s not going to last very long.

“Please Will” she moans outs, her hand tightening in his hair, pulling  closer to her chest to hold him in that position against her, while the other slips between them and into her own wetness, too impatient to wait for him.

His only response is too suck harder on the nipple in his mouth before releasing it with a pop. He shakes his head at her with a slight smile before continuing his voyage down her torso. He had to taste her before anything else, even if the waiting killed him. He kisses under her breasts and then down to her hip bone, pausing only to dip his tongue into her belly button. He kisses every stretch mark he finds there (presumably from when she was pregnant with Stephanie) and when he comes face to face with her scar he pauses. _She almost died_.

“Billy?” She asks running a hand through his hair in askance of why he’s stopped, her hand going to cover the scar in sudden embarrassment.

“Don’t” he says coming back to his senses and pushing her hand away. “You’re fucking beautiful MacKenzie. The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in real life” and he kisses the scar then, over and over. _I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry._

She comes hard against his tongue and fingers minutes later, a string of expletives spilling out of her mouth of their own accord. Then she’s suddenly flipped them over and is sinking down slowly onto his length, head thrown back with her brown hair spilling down her back. _Fuck._ He buckles his hips to meet her every thrust, mesmerised by the sight of her on top of him. They’ve always been so good at this and sliding into her feels like coming home. It’s familiar and exciting at the same time and when she grinds forward, her dark eyes meeting his, Will knows he’s close to losing it. He manages to slip a hand between them, Mac only needing a few strokes before she tightens around him. A moment later he’s exploding inside of her, the sight of her breathless and shaking pushing him over the edge, _I love you_ slipping out of his mouth over and over.

She collapse on his sweaty chest, cuddling her face into his neck and  dropping a kiss onto collar bone as they both try to catch their breath.  He quickly wraps his arms around her, squeezing her closer to him, leaving his own kisses on the crown of her head. They stay in a comfortable silence while their heartbeats return to normal, hands eventually finding each other and fingers interlacing.  He wanted to have this forever. He wanted this to really be his life; he didn’t want to return to his own reality. He couldn’t go back to being that lonely guy again. Not after this.

“Will you-” he pauses, moving the sweat- slicked hair off her forehead before tilting her chin up to look at him. “will you tell me about us?” There’s still so much that he doesn’t know about their life together. Still so much that he wants to ask her. He still wanted to know how they got past all of it; Past the hurt, pain and betrayal.

“What do you want to know?” Mac asks softly, lightly tracing patterns on his chest with her fingers.

“Anything. Everything”

Mac laughs lightly at that, and he feels it reverberate through his whole body, sending chills down his spine. Fuck, he loves her.

“Do you remember when you first came to see me in the hospital after I had been stabbed?” She asks and she has a faraway look in her eyes, almost as if she doesn’t expect him to answer her, but she continues before he can. “It was about two days since I had been in the hospital and I was a little hoped up on pain medication. The last thing I was expecting when I woke up was to see you sitting in the chair beside me, looking like you hadn’t slept in days.” She gives a rueful laugh then. “I thought you were a hallucination, you know.  As soon as I was stabbed, all I could think about was you. I just wanted you, even when I woke up after surgery and saw my whole family there. All I wanted was you. So I thought you were a hallucination”

“But it was really me?” he asks unsure.

She nods against him and he sees the tears pooling in her eyes. “It was really you. You weren’t a hallucination. You told me you had read all my emails on the flight and then you asked me to marry you, in the middle of rambling about a little kid who shreds paper. I thought you had lost your mind. After everything that happened between us you still showed up, when I really didn’t think you would. You came.”

He’s wiping the tears away by the time she’s finished talking. She had really thought he wouldn’t come? Then again could he really have said at the beginning of his strange journey that he would have gone to her?

It’s then he realises what he would do when he returned to his own reality; what he _had_ to do.

His future depended on it.


	10. Home Is Wherever I'm With You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He can feel himself slipping; being pulled away from here. He’s been feeling it all day and every part of him has been trying to fight it. He’s not ready to go yet; not when he had just gotten his MacKenzie back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is! Again, this gets a little strange towards the end but hopefully it's not too out there to follow!  
> Thank you to everyone who has continued to support this story! You guys are the best!
> 
> One Last Good Day for Will. Happy Monday/Sunday!

_"Did you say it? I love you. I don't ever want to live without you. You changed my life. Make a plan. Set a goal. Work toward it. But every now and then look around, drink it in. Cause this is it. It might all be gone tomorrow." - Grey's Anatomy_

 

He wakes up to the sun in his face and a warm body pressed up against him. When Will manages to crack his eyes open he’s greeted with MacKenzie’s dark eyes and her intense gaze. She’s laying on her side facing him, with her head propped up on her hand, looking intently at him.

He groans and closes his eyes again. “MacKenzie” He moans, moving closer to her and burying his face in the dip between her shoulder and neck.

“Sorry” she mumbles, running her free hand lightly through his morning hair.

Will drops a kiss to her collar bone before moving his face out of the crook of her neck so he can get a good look at her. Even first thing in the morning she’s beautiful. He had missed seeing her like this, first thing in the morning with the world outside still silent, where he could imagine that it was just the two of them.

“What are you doing?” he asks looking up at her, voice still laced with sleep.

“Nothing, I just-” she hesitates, moving her hand out of his hair to run it tentatively down his check while searching his eyes with her own. “Is it still _you_?”

_Oh_. He immediately understands what she means- is it still him and not _other Will,_ her actual husband. “It’s still me, Mac”

She nods silently, her eyes dropping from his to where her fingers were running gently across his jaw. They had talked about it last night and he had tried to explain it to her the best he could; well as much as he could when he didn’t really even understand it. None of this made sense, waking up in another time, _in another life_ but he told her everything anyway: Charlie telling him about the stabbing, the woman at the bar and waking up in bed with her that first morning. She had taken it as well as a person could, asking him a few questions her and there, while regarding him with wide eyes. She didn’t fully understand (neither did he) but she made a valiant effort to listen and not treat him like he was crazy. He had begged her not to. He had begged her to believe him. Though they both agreed that what he was describing was _impossible_. (She had asked him a few basic questions though, just to make sure that he wasn’t in fact losing his mind).

Mac had also answered his questions about their life together. How they had gotten engaged when he had come to see her, how she had found out she was pregnant in early 2010 and how the pregnancy was high risk due to the fact that she had been stabbed in the abdomen not too long before. The pregnancy had been a surprise to both of them and when she had rushed to Illinois to tell him when he was at Northwestern ( she had surprised him and it had apparently caused an _incident_ or something) they had gotten married a few days later when they returned to New York, not wanting to wait any longer. The pregnancy was tough and 7 months in Stephanie decided that she was ready to be born. She was tiny, but she was a fighter, Mac tells him with tears in her eyes.

He had sat silently as she listed to all of it, only asking a question here and there until she had eventually fallen asleep somewhere in the middle of him speaking.

“Do you miss him?” Will can’t help but ask as his own hand slips under the t-shirt she had thrown on after their _activities_ last night. He strokes the soft skin there, hands greedy for every bit of her after being deprived for so many years.

Mac shrugs before she drops the hand holding her head up, landing softly on her pillow and tries to burrow deeper into his arms. “Well I haven’t really lost him have I?” Mackenzie looks up at him then.

He supposes that she is right. It was still him. He and other _Will_ were one in the same and she was his wife and Stephanie was his daughter. As odd and twisted as this situation was, this was his life, his world.

“But” she pipes up again “I suppose in a way I do miss him. There are things that we’ve shared, that only he can understand…” her voice trails off then like she’s in a distant memory. Will understands. There are secrets and intimacies between her and his counterpart that he can only imagine. Intimacies that come with being married and having gone through everything that they had been through in the past five years.

Mac must sense his thoughts because she lays a warm hand against his cheek binging him out of his thoughts. “It’s still you, though. You are still the same person that I fell in love with all those years ago in D.C.  I see it every time you’ve looked at me and every time I’ve see you with Stephanie in the last few days. You and him, you’re the same.”

He nods, leaning over to plant a soft kiss on her lips. “I know” she’d been repeating that to him since last night and he couldn’t help but think that she is amazing.  He laughs suddenly when he thinks of the absurdity of the situation.

“What?” Mac asks, with a crinkle of her brow at his sudden outburst of laughter.

“I just told you the most impossible thing is happening to me and you’re the one comforting and reassuring me?”

Mac chuckles at that. “I guess that is weird, but I meant it when I said for ‘better or worse’” she says flashing her left hand in his face (her engagement ring was _huge_ and it reminded Will of one that she had described seeing in a movie once). She gets serious again and diverts her eyes from his. “Do you know when he’s coming back- or how long you’ll be here for?”

Will shakes his head. “No, I don’t. It’s not forever-”

His sentence is cut off by a familiar knocking on the door.

“Mommy? Daddy? Are you guys awake?” Stephanie’s small voice calls out while still continuing her not –so- gentle knocking on the door. If they were asleep, they certainly would have been awake now.

MacKenzie chuckles, before giving his shoulder a light squeeze. “Come in darling”

 The door flies open and the little girl rushes over to the bed as fast as her legs can carry her, her injury clearly not slowing her down at all. Stephanie foregoes pulling herself up on the bed like she usually does and instead comes to a halt on his side of the bed, holding her arms out to him. Will shifts in bed and groan as he leans over the edge to hoist the child up into the bed.

He has to chuckle as he remember his first morning here not too long ago. This is like déjà vu. Him in bed with Mac and the kid banging on the door. That day seemed like a lifetime ago.

Stephanie burrows into the sheets as soon as he puts her down scooting over to her mother and nestling herself in Mac’s open arms. Will scoots back over to them when he’s back in the sheets, an urge to be a part of their closeness taking over.

MacKenzie showers her in kisses before wrapping her arms around the small child. “Good morning my little monkey” she says gently tickling Stephanie’s side.

 “Good morning, mommy and daddy!” she says with entirely too much enthusiasm for so early in the morning. “Are we staying in bed today?” The child asks hopefully looking between her parents, while reaching over to pull Wills arm to encircle her and her mother.

Will chuckles and Mac shakes her head. “No baby, daddy and I have to go to work” the little girls face instantly falls and a pout takes over. “But, we were thinking you could come into the office with us.”

The pout on Stephanie’s face is instantly replaced by a wide grin. “Really?! I love coming to work with you!” she’s bouncing slightly in the bed now, excitement too much to contain and Will can’t help the grin on his face. She’s a happy carefree child. Just like it should be.

Mackenzie laughs at her enthusiasm. They had decided last night to let the kid to just be with them for the day. They were both still too rattled to let her spend the whole day away from them. “I know you do. Then you can get everyone to sign your cast” Mac says gently tapping on the bright yellow plaster.

Stephanie nods enthusiastically. “And I can help daddy write his words for T.V and colour you more pictures, mommy!”

The little girl looks between at them expectantly, seeking their approval. They both nod in affirmation.

Will lightly touches her left arm. “How is your arm feeling this morning, princess?”

“S’okay daddy” she smiles up at him then pushes herself closer to him, wrapping her good hand around his neck. She leans in close to him secretively. “Did you ask mommy about a baby sister or a puppy?”

_Shit_. He was really hoping she had forgotten all about that.

The question is asked in a loud whisper and he tries to avoid Mac’s eyes, but her foot connecting with his shin under the sheets lets him know that she heard them.

MacKenzie quickly tries to distract Stephanie with questions about what else she plans on doing with them at the office. It works for the time being and the gets the little girl chattering about the day.

 

**

It’s a good news day at the office. It’s not slow but it’s not too busy either.

When they get to the office Stephanie is immediately taken off their hands by Jim, who scoops her up and drops his jaw with the right amount of dramatics at the sight of her cast (the bright yellow plaster is clashing horribly with the ruffled purple skirt that she’s wearing over her pink tights and white _Frozen_ shirt. MacKenzie had let her dress herself and Will has to admit her lack of colour co-ordination is adorable). Her uncle Jim demands a re-telling of the story of her fall while Neal and some of the other staff member get to signing her cast.

Mac follows him into his office once she is satisfied that her daughter is in good hands, proceeding to set up her newspapers and highlighters on the table in his office, just like she had done the day before. He joins her at the table, they exchange playful gibes and he distracts her while he watches some of the morning shows. He enjoys it. It’s playful and relaxed, and he finds himself feeling more content than he has been in years. It reminds him of how life was before (before she told him about the Brian), but better because she was his _wife_ now.  His heart is achingly full and all he can think about is how he wants to stay, forever.

Later on in the afternoon, just after the first run down of the day Will finds himself alone in his office. He’s sitting at his desk outlining his script for the show tonight and he finds himself feeling excited for the broadcast. He hadn’t felt this way in a long time, not since him and Mac were doing their show at CNN. He’s excited about the news again, the real news not the stuff he had been doing the past few years. His script practically writes itself and it feels good. All he can think about is how he wants to make MacKenzie proud.

He’s in the middle of doing research about the growing unrest in Ferguson after the Michael Brown shooting, when his door is gradually pushed open. Stephanie walks in slowly, while rubbing her eyes with her uninjured hand. She walks around his desk to where he is sitting and stops right next to his chair.

He scoots his chair back from the desk and she immediately stands in front of him, doing her best to clamber onto his lap with one hand. He puts his hands under her arms and helps her up.

“Hi” she says softly dropping her head to his shoulder.

“Hi” he returns using the same tone. “Where’s your mommy?” the last time he had seen Stephanie was before he had gone up to Charlies office before the run down and she was colouring in Mac’s office.

She points to the bullpen visible just beyond the glass walls of his office. “Aunt Maggie is here”

His brows furrow for a moment. Maggie?

Then he remembers seeing her picture mixed in with the employee files that he had been looking at last week. Margret Jordan that was her name. She had been his assistant and then been promoted to associate producer. Now she was apparently a field producer in their D.C offices after having transferred there last year. He had thought her name was Ellen for a while. That reminds him of that night last week.

She was the one who had come to him and told him that Charlie wanted to see him that night. The memory of that night for some reason gives Will a strange pang in his chest and he pulls Stephanie tighter against him; as if to ward off that strange feeling.

“Are you sleepy?” he asks when she yawns and drops her head to his shoulder.

She nods, not bothering to use any words. He thinks she might fall asleep in his arms and he doesn’t mind that at all, still able to write his notes with her in his arms. Plus he figures that little kids are supposed to take naps, right?

Mac pops into his office with Maggie in tow a few minutes later. Stephanie is breathing softly against him by then, a warm weight in his arms.  Mac scoops the sleeping girl out of his arms, saying she will put her down in her office for her afternoon nap. He finds out that Maggie is here for a story (he remembers Charlie muttering something about them doing more cross network stories when he had seen him earlier that day) and it’s strange to see her like this. She’s not the same anxious girl that he remembers but more confident and self-assured. He feels that odd pang in his chest again, while talking to her and is grateful when Mac asks him to pick some lunch up for them and he’s able to escape their conversation.

 

He goes to the sandwich shop a few blocks from the office. It’s been his favourite one since he’d moved to New York. It’s busy because it’s the lunch time rush, but it’s not too bad and he’s happy to wait, thinking about how good that turkey sandwich will be.

When he eventually gets to the counter he mindlessly greets the employee, too busy looking down at the display deciding what else to put on his sandwich, but when he does eventually look up at the person helping him, his heart stops.

It’s the woman from that night- from the bar! The one who had taken him on this crazy journey. What was she doing here?

She’s regarding him with a smirk, eyebrows slightly raised. “If it isn’t my old friend Will”

He shakes his head. “What are you doing here?”

The smile she gives him is a little too all-knowing for his liking. She continues preparing the three sandwiches he had ordered as she answers him. “I think you know why I’m here. You’ve been feeling it all morning”

Will shakes his head again. “No” he argues, trying to keep his voice even. This was a public place and there were a few people behind him in the line so he didn’t want to make a scene.

The woman was right though. He had been feeling something strange the whole day; an undercurrent to the contentment bubbling over in his life. The déjà vu from this morning and the weird pang in his chest when he had seen Maggie. He can feel himself slipping; being pulled away from _here._ He’s been feeling it all day and every part of him has been trying to fight it. He’s not ready to go yet; not when he had just gotten his MacKenzie back.

“Time’s up, Will” she says jarring him out of his thoughts. They’re at the register now and she’s waiting for him to pay.

“No. I don’t want to go back, not yet.” His voice is desperate and strung out. The line behind him is building and people are getting impatient. “I’ve only been here for a few days. It can’t be time yet!”

She sighs and gives him a soft smile. “It was a glimpse, Will. You knew this wasn’t going to last forever. You were here to learn something and now you have. It’s time to go”

When the person behind him tells him to get a move on he quickly digs out the correct number of bills from his wallet before thrusting the money at the woman. “No. You can’t just do this. I have a family; a little girl and a wife” he grabs his food, anger bubbling up. “It’s not fair. I won’t let you do this!”

He’s half way out the store when he hears her call out to him. “You can’t fight it, Will!”

He doesn’t look back though, just keeps on going. He has a sudden urge to see MacKenzie and Stephanie, to hold them and make sure they are still there.

When he does get back to the office Stephanie has woken up from her nap, rejuvenated and runs full speed towards him crashing into his legs and wrapping her arms around him. It’s as if she hasn’t seen him in weeks, instead of just minutes. It grounds him slightly, calms his beating heart. She leads him back to Mac’s office and when MacKenzie greets him with a bright smile he gets that pang in his chest again.

_He wants to stay._

**

The show that night is one of the best he has done in years. It’s the kind of show that reminds him why he got into this business in the first place.

He soaks it all in and he holds on to the way MacKenzie’s voice sounds in his ear. He had missed that.

Stephanie has fallen asleep by the end of the show and Will carries her to the waiting town car and then to her room when they arrive home. The little girl had quite the exciting day, explaining in great detail to everyone who would listen how she broke her wrist. The cast on her left arm was now covered in black Sharpie marker with well-wishes from almost all the staff.

When he sees Mac following him up the stairs to Stephanie’s room, he stops her with a gentle hand on her elbow.

“Will you let me put her down by myself?”

Her eyebrows hike up curiously but she nods in agreeance. “Just don’t be too long, okay?” Mac waits until he says yes before moving over to her sleeping daughter. “Good night my sweet girl. Mummy loves you” she gently whispers before dropping a kiss to Stephanie’s brow then turning to head back to their room.

When he gets to her room he moves to the bed, pulling back the comforter, gently depositing the small child onto the bed as best he can without waking her. He gets her tucked in and is about to leave when he hears her call out.

“Are you going now daddy?”

He looks down at her and finds her blue eyes looking up at him, struggling to stay open. She must have woken up when he put her down. He tries not to smile at the irony of her words.

“Yeah, Stephie. I thought you were asleep”

She holds out a hand to him, patting the side of her bed. “Will you stay ‘till I fall asleep again, daddy?”

He couldn’t tell her no even if he wanted to. “Of course I can, princess.” He climbs onto the bed, but stays above the sheets. She snuggles into him, laying her head on his chest.

He feels that familiar pang again, pulling him away again and cuddles the little girl closer, dropping a kiss to her head. It’s funny how a few days ago, he didn’t want this. He wanted so desperately to leave this place and not have this small child clinging onto him.

“I love you, Stephanie” he whispers into her hair. He would miss her, this little girl who softened his heart unexpectedly.

“Love you” she mumbles back sleep getting the better of her.

Will stays until he’s sure she’s fast asleep, before quietly making his way downstairs to MacKenzie. When he gets to their room only his bedside lamp is on and she’s in bed facing his side. He takes a minute just to stand there and take it all in.

He wants to stay but he knows he can’t. Even if this is in some way _his_ life, he wants to actually live it; not just come in the middle and not get to experience all of it. He wants all of the memories that she had told him about.

He peels off his jacket and shoes and slips into bed beside her. She immediately moans and shifts closer to him. He watches her, touches her, and breathes her in. He wants to always remember her like this.

“You’re my home, MacKenzie. I’ll always come back to you. Always” he whispers.

Will knows that he has to leave this place but he also knows that as soon as he falls asleep then it’s over. So he fights to stay awake just so that he can be here with her for a little longer.

 

Just as he is about to pass it sleep a few hours later, he feels a presence behind him, pulling him, calling him away from _here._ He feels that sensation that you get when you’re falling in a dream and you suddenly jerk back awake. When he opens his eyes again, everything is white around him; too bright to really see anything and the woman from the bar is standing next to him.

Will turns to look at her, her face obscured and not as clear as it had been before.

“Is this a dream?” he asks because his feet don’t quite feel like they’re on solid ground.

The lady laughs. “No, Will, it’s not. It’s time to go now; your little journey is over. I think you’ve learned all that you need to”

Then he feels something pulling him away again. “Wait!” he says, remembering her words on the night they first met. _I’ve seen your future Will, and you and MacKenzie will hurt each other over and over again, but it doesn’t have to be like that._ “You said that you’ve seen the future I have if I don’t go to MacKenzie after she is stabbed. Can you show me?”

She seems to consider his request for a minute before he feel his stomach drop and the ground fall out from underneath him.

He sees it all like a movie playing out in front of him, or a vivid dream where he’s watching himself.

It’s 2010 and he sees her in the ACN building. Dark green Jacket and short hair. They’re staring each other down from across the bullpen.

_Hi Will. You look good._

He sees them arguing in his office, her trying to convince him to do the news, to give her a job. He sees their first broadcast together in years, the B.P. spill.

He sees her sending a text message to the whole staff. He sees himself screaming at her in front of the whole staff and messing up their broadcast that night with something about Sarah Palin.

_I didn’t know how I felt about you until I was with him again._

He sees the parade of women he flaunts in the newsroom to make MacKenzie jealous and how it gets turned around on him when he finds out that she has a boyfriend. He sees the hurt in her face when she finds out about the non-compete clause in his contract just so he could be able to fire her every Friday.

_How much do you hate me?!_

He sees her surprise him on Valentine’s Day, then talking to doctor Habib about it all. Then he sees himself buy a ring just to prove a point, just to hurt her. He sees himself leaving her a voice mail after their bin Laden broadcast and then bringing Brian into their newsroom to punish her when he thinks she chose not to reply to his message.

_If we’re gonna do this lets not pretend we’re not doing this_.

Then he overdoses on anti-depressants and she stays by his side the whole time, yet he still refuses to tell her what the message said when he finds out that she never got it. He sees himself build a partnership with MacKenzie, and then how he messes it all up by getting involved with a tabloid reporter, just to prove that he didn’t love her anymore.

_You forgot for a minute, that you made a pledge to be mad at me for the rest of your life._

She’s there for him when his father dies, picking up the pieces even when he was hurting her by dating that woman. Then he sees the fallout from their Genoa report and how she takes all the blame on herself.

_I wanted to know what the punishments going to be this time._

Then he sees himself telling her about the ring in a moment of anger, after she pleads for him to fire her. He sees the pain and hurt flash across her face and his own heart breaks.

_I was hung up on him since her rejected me. I liked that he hated that I was dating you_

He hurts MacKenzie over and over again, his own anger clouding his judgement for two years.

_Later. We weren’t just dating later, but at the beginning we were though… then I fell in love with you and I never saw him again._

So much time wasted.

_I brutally hurt you and that’s a fact and facts don’t change; but in my lifetime I’ve never done it intentionally._

Then it suddenly all just stops.

The next thing he knows it feels like he’s falling and everything goes dark.


	11. Tell Me Some Things Last

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe it was all just a dream. He wracks his brain, thinking back on all that had happened in the last week. It was real. It had to have been real. There is no way that it was all just his imagination.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here we are at the second last chapter! I've just come from the dentist and half my face is numb, but I had to stop procrastinating about posting this chapter. Thank you to everyone who is still reading and supporting this story! It's been such fun to write.
> 
> Everything comes full circle for Will now. Enjoy!

_“However far away, I will always love you. However long I stay, I will always love you. Whatever words I say, I will always love you.”- The Cure, Lovesong_

He’s woken up by incessant ringing and buzzing.

He groans as he blindly reaches over in the direction of the noise, eyes still closed and still trying to wake up. The buzzing stops, so Will relaxes his body and flops back down on the bed.

His head is fuzzy and pounding. His throat is dry and he can feel the bright sunlight tickling his eyelids. Even with his eyes closed, he can tell that it’s too bright and not how he has been waking up for the past few mornings, and when the events of the past few days resurface in his sleep addled brain, fear immediately constricts his heart.

Will immediately reaches over to the other side of the bed, eyes still closed, hoping that the sinking feeling in his stomach does not mean what he thinks it does; hoping that he’s still _there_ with them. His hand hits the mattress however, confirming what he knew to be true; he was back in his own world. He rips his eyes open in desperation, needing to see it to believe it. The space beside him in bed is cold and empty, his grey sheets crumpled only on his side. He allows his eyes to adjust to the sunlight streaming in through his floor-to-ceiling glass windows, and looks around the room.

Everything seems so different now. His apartment is too cold and too quiet and too empty. The dark colours are harsh and lack that distinct homey feeling. In the short time that he was gone, he had become used to MacKenzie’s warm body curled on top and all around him. His ears were now used to hearing Stephanie’s little voice calling out on the other side of the door, too excited for so early in the morning.

It’s sort of funny now that he thinks about it. The first morning in that other world, he had wished he could be exactly where he is now. He wished to be in his own apartment and his own bed, _alone_. Now it’s the last thing he wants.

Before he can think on that too long, the buzzing that woke him up starts up again. It’s his phone. Will reaches over to his night stand and brings the device to his ear.

“Hello?”

“Will, where the hell have you been?!” Charlie’s voice barks out from the other end of the line. Will doesn’t even have time to answer before Charlie starts again” I’ve been calling all night and you haven’t picked up once!”

Will’s brow creases. All night? He’s pretty sure he’s been gone for over a week so people must have been trying to reach him for a lot longer. “Yeah, I know I’ve been off the grid for over a week but I’m oka-”

“A week?” Charlie interrupts him, sounding confused. “Will, I saw you just last night”

“What?” That’s not possible. He knows he’s been gone for longer than that. “The last time that I saw you was last week, when you told me about MacKenzie’s stabbing”

“Will” Charlie says cautiously “that was last night. I told you about MacKenzie last night”

His head feels heavy, like he had slept for too long and he’s really not awake enough to have this conversation right now.

_Maybe it was all just a dream._

He wracks his brain, thinking back on all that had happened in the last week. It was _real_. It had to have been real. There is no way that it was all just his imagination. Charlie has to be mistaken. “No, it’s been a week…” he trails off as his eyes find his watch on the nightstand and look at the date.

Charlie is right.  It hasn’t been a week; it hasn’t even been a day. _Was_ it all just a dream?

“Are you alright, Will?” The older man sounds genuinely concerned now.

“Yeah, I uh-” he’s still trying to wrap his mind around this whole thing. “I’m fine, fine. I guess I’m just still half asleep”

“Well, you worried me. You left my office in pretty bad shape last night and then you don’t take my calls”

Will mumbles an apology, half-heartedly listening to the man still too caught up in his own thoughts. He considers for a moment, that maybe it was just a dream. MacKenzie as his wife and Stephanie as their kid; maybe it was all just a product of his over-active imagination. What he had experienced (or dreamt) could not actually have been real because things like that did not just _happen._ He’s sure that if he were to tell people, that no one would believe him.

Then he remembers how MacKenzie had believed him.

He remembers waking up cuddled against her. He remembers taking Stephanie to preschool and how she talked animatedly to her stuffed bear as if he were alive. He remembers them serving Mac breakfast in bed and having a lazy Sunday. He remembers what it felt like to the news with her and to actually enjoy his job again. He remembers how his heart had stopped when they got the call about Stephanie’s fall and how she had held tightly onto his hand while they put on her bright yellow cast. He remembers how it took his breath away the first time he had seen her and MacKenzie together, identical smiles covering their faces. He remembers the warm weight of little Stephanie against his chest and in his arms. He remembers making love to MacKenzie.

It’s all bright and clear in his mind and he’s sure that it wasn’t a dream; not when it’s this vivid in his brain. Not when he can still feel MacKenzie’s breath on his neck and Stephanie’s tiny hand holding tightly onto his.

He has to go; he has to get to her. He has to get back to _them._

“Uh, Charlie, I have to go” he says cutting the older man off. He throws the cold sheets off his body and heads for his closet.

“Wait!” Charlie shouts before he can end the call. “I was calling to see if you had reconsidered what I said last night about going to see her? I know she broke your heart but she’s hurt, Will. It’s obvious to me that you still love her, so maybe this would be good for you?”

Will stops in his tracks. He remembers what Mac had said to him that night. _She thought he wouldn’t come._ Since it’s only a day after her stabbing he can still meet her there, he can still go to the hospital. He still has time.

“Yeah, I’ve definitely changed my mind.” Will replies with a laugh. Really, Mac was the one who had changed his mind for him. “I need to go and see her. My future depends on it”

He hears the smile in Charlies voice when he replies. “Seems like you’ve finally come to your senses! It’s a good thing that I booked you a plane ticket for today, just in case”

She’s written all over his life, MacKenzie is.  She’d come into his life like a whirlwind, and rooted herself deep within him and she’s never left. Though this all feels like fate, like it was decided on a long time ago; he knows how fragile it is. Will has seen the future where he doesn’t go to her and he knows how fragile this all is. He knows how one decision could have a ripple effect on his whole future. While this may be fate, he has to choose her and keep choosing her every day for the rest of his life. And from what he’s seen, it will be a pretty great life.

Yeah, he’s finally come to his senses.

**

He agrees to meet Charlie at the office to finalise details about his impromptu trip and given that his plane leaves at later in the day, he has time. On his way to the office though, he remembered the woman from the bar, the one who had sent him on his little journey. He wonders if she’ll be there now. Curiosity gets the best of him and he finds himself walking into _Hang Chews._

He gets there and immediately goes to the bar, remembering how angry he was the last time he had been here; how he had demanded to know why she had sent him on his journey and how she had no right to interfere in his life.

_“This is a glimpse into the future you can have, if you make the right choices”_

_“But I don’t understand how this is even possible? Who are you?” Will asks trying to wrap his head around this situation._

_“Like I told you last night, I’m an old friend. I’ve been watching you for a long time, Will” the woman says and he can feel her blue eyes boring into him “and you haven’t been happy for long time, not since MacKenzie left”_

_Now he’s angry. “So what, huh? You, whoever or whatever you are decided to come and turn my whole world upside down because you think MacKenzie and I make a cute couple? You have no idea what she did to me and how she hurt me. She did this to me, she ruined us!  I’m better off without her” Will is shouting now and he knows he’s causing a scene but he can’t help it. Luckily the bar is pretty deserted given the time of day._

_The woman does not at all seem disturbed by his outburst. “Better off without her? That wasn’t really much of a life you were living before, Will. Killing yourself with cigarettes, not sleeping and drinking away your feelings. You were a sad and lonely guy, Will. You missed her and yet you couldn’t read and email or letter or pick up her phone calls. Something drastic had to be done before you ruined your chance at happiness and caused yourself even more pain.”_

_“But why me? Why do you care whether I’m happy or not?”_

_“Like I said, you brought this on yourself Will. You made a decision last night that will have a ripple effect on not only your life but MacKenzie’s and your daughters too. The people who sent me care about you and they just want you to be happy.”_

_“So you sent me to the future I could have if I had decided to go and see MacKenzie after she had been stabbed” he asks trying to understand._

_The bartender nods._

_“What’s the whole point of this?_

_“You told me last night that you lived a life of no regrets, but can you really say that is true? I’ve seen your future Will, and you and MacKenzie will hurt each other over and over again, but it doesn’t have to be like that”_

What a difference a week makes.

He asks the young man behind the bar about the older woman, but the guy says he has never heard of her and that no one by that description works for them. They guy claims she wasn’t even the night he had found out about Mac (which was technically last night).

He’s not surprised by the answer he gets though still has so many questions for her. Who was she and who had sent her? It seems right though, a fitting end to this strange event. She’d done her job and convinced him to go to Mac.

He leaves the bar feeling content and after he talks to Charlie at the office he stops by Tiffany’s to pick something up for MacKenzie.

A few hours later he finds himself on a plane to Germany.

When he’s checked in and seated in first class, he reaches into his carry on for his laptop. The ring is burning a hole in his pocket and his hands are clammy and slightly shaky. He remembers MacKenzie telling him that he had read all of her emails. So he logs into his email account, takes a deep breath, clicks on the first email he sees and begins to read.

He’s got nine hours to kill and two years’ worth of emails to get through before he lands.


	12. Rivers And Roads

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will had run far away, through valleys and mountains; over rivers and roads but he has finally made it back. He may have taken the long way around but he was finally home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know. This chapter is super late but I've written and re-written this chapter so many times and I'm still not totally happy with it but I cant stall any longer. So here it is! Thank you to everyone who had commented, liked and read this story! I loved writing it.
> 
> There will be a short epilogue to follow in the next few days that sets the stage nicely for the sequel I'm working on for this story.
> 
> Enjoy!

_“Rivers and roads. Rivers and roads; rivers ‘till I reach you” – The Head and The Heart, Rivers and Roads_

Will is exhausted when the plane eventually lands in Germany just after 6 A.M. He hasn’t slept- couldn’t sleep until he had read them all. All of her emails, every last one.

He felt rubbed raw.

How much time had he wasted being angry and stubborn?  For the one way in which she had hurt him, he had retaliated by hurting her in a million more ways. _Except for the things that she did wrong, she did everything right, too. The rest was him._ He knows that now.

As exhausted as he feels as he drags himself off the plane and into the terminal towards the gate; he can’t wait to see her. His eyes and bones are heavy from a lack of sleep but he can feel himself practically vibrating out of his skin at the prospect of seeing his MacKenzie again.

Will makes quick works of collecting his one small bag off the luggage carousel and then following the sign out to the arrivals area. Charlie had organised everything and he knew there would be someone there waiting for him to take him to the hospital where she was. Charlie had also told him that his old news director had spoken to MacKenzie’s father, letting him know that Will was coming. He could feel his palms sweating at the prospect of seeing the man again and thinking about how he would be received by her family.

As soon as the terminal doors open Will spots the Chauffeur holding up a sign with his name on it. He makes his way quickly over to the man and they get going. He’s so grateful to Charlie for getting this all together, for knowing him better than he apparently knew himself. Germany is a beautiful country, somewhere he has never been before but he barely pays attention to the scenery on the drive. His mind is swirling with everything he had read in the past few hours; trying to think about what he will say to Mac when he sees her. Will has to keep reminding himself that for her it’s been a few years since they had seen each other, but for him it was just two days ago that he was waking up in bed next to her. He’ll have to remember to take it easy with her, to take it slow.

Then there was the issue of the ring he was currently fiddling with in his hands. In her mind they hadn’t seen or spoken to each other in two years, how the heck was he going to ask her to marry him? The last thing he wanted her to think was that this was a spur of the moment decision because it wasn’t. she had to say yes, their whole future depended on it.

 **

The lack of sleep and jet lag has caught up with him by the time they get to the hospital. The driver tells Will that he will drop his bags at the hotel and be available for whenever he needs to leave the hospital.

Will walks in on unsteady legs

What if she says no? He shakes his head at his own ridiculous thoughts, because she can’t say no, right? He’s just come from a future  where she agreed to marry him so she obviously won’t say no… but what if there’s _another_ reality that he didn’t see where she does say no and his whole life is ruined and she doesn’t love him and he never sees her again and-

 _No_. He shakes his head stopping his train of thought. He won’t let that happen.

He arrives on her floor then. It’s quiet at this time of morning (well, as quiet as a hospital can be) and when he turns the corner in search of her room number he stumbles onto her family littered in the private waiting area near her room.

All the people in the space turn and look at him and he stops himself in his tracks. No one looks surprised to see him here, which makes sense since Charlie called ahead and let them know he was coming. It’s almost time for visiting hours and when he had given the nurse his name and asked for MacKenzie’s room she had waived him through.

His heart picks up when he sees Jim, Mac’s older brother and one of her twin sisters there. They all look worn out and the worry is etched on their faces. Her brother, Peter lets go of the hand of the woman next to him (Will has never seen her before so he assumes she’s his girlfriend) and walks up to Will looking him over.

He had once been good friends with her brother, finding Peter easy to get along with. Peter was an exact physical copy of Mac’s dad; tall and lean with the steely McHale hazel eyes. He had no idea what Peter thought of him now.

Peter walks right up to him and stands in front of Will with his hands crossed in front of him.

“Peter I-” he tries to break the ice but Peter hold a hand up to stop him.

“She asked for you, you know that?” his jaw is set and his gaze is hard. “When she first woke up, you were the first person she asked for. Despite everything that’s happened she still loves you. Don’t hurt her”

Will nods, swallowing past the nervous lump in his throat. “I won’t”.

Peter looks him over once more and seems to accept his words. He steps out of Will’s way giving him a clear path to MacKenzie’s room. It’s strange to see her usually quiet and shy older brother like this. Mac didn’t need anyone fighting her battles for her, everyone knew that and Peter was not the type to threaten harm to any man who hurts one of his sisters, but he was the sibling Mac was closest to as they were so close in age and Will knew that Mac had probably told him everything that had happened when they broke up.

Just as he’s about to open her door it swings open to reveal Mac’s worn out parents coming out. Will hadn’t seen her parents in years but had heard about Sir Richards heart attack last year and looking at the man now he could see that he was weary and worn out; worry for his eldest daughter overtaking his features. Mac and her father had always been close, them being cut from the same cloth, and both sharing a love of politics and current events. Mac was unfailingly ethical and always strived for the truth, qualities she inherited from her father. His steely gaze meets Wills own but he doesn’t say anything to him and before Will can offer his hand in greeting, Mac’s mother is wrapping him in a fierce hug.

“Oh, William” she says giving him a squeeze. “You made it. Thank you so much for coming” Anne lets go of him and gives him a good look over. She’s a strong woman, who in some ways reminds Will of his own mother.

Mac’s father is silent beside Anne, looking toward him doubtfully.  Will holds out his hand to shake his in greeting and is relived when the older man takes it.

“She’s still sleeping but she should be waking up soon. The knife didn’t hit any major organs but it did nick some of her large intestine. They will have to watch for infection but they think Mackie will make a full recovery” Richard says all in one go before dropping his eyes from Will’s and then moving towards the private waiting room.

Will throws a surprised look towards Mac’s mother who explains that the older man is just worried for his daughter and doesn’t mean anything by his behaviour. Anne squeezes his arm comfortingly before following after her husband.

When he’s finally allowed into MacKenzie’s room, he has to take a deep breath to steady himself and to try and get his heart rate to a normal pace. He pushes the door open and is immediately met with her small frame in the hospital bed, looking too pale, too thin and too fragile. Seeing her in the hospital bed like this, he can’t help but be reminded of seeing Stephanie in a similar position. It knocks the wind right out of him.

He steps forward on unsteady legs and moves to her bedside. When he reaches her bed side he gently takes her hand in his, wrapping his lager hands around her cold one. Her skin is pale (her father had told him that she had lost a fair amount of blood) and she looks too thin. Her hair is long and in messy strands around her face and she’s never been more beautiful to him.

He’s missed her.

Seeing her there in front of him looking so fragile reminds him of how close he came to losing her forever. The events of the past week (hell, the last two years) come rushing forward and flood his mind. _He feels so tired._ He feels like he’s been running for the past two years; running from her and his feelings for her, and it’s all catching up to him in this moment. And he’s so very tired; so tired of running. He’s missed her so terribly and his heart aches at the sight of her.

 _Home_.

Will had run far away, through valleys and mountains; over rivers and roads but he has finally made it back. He may have taken the long way around but he was finally home.

**

He doesn’t have to wait long for her to wake up because a few minutes later she’s stirring on the bed. Will is sitting on the chair that he assumes her mother had vacated earlier, still holding firmly onto her hand.

MacKenzie groans as she comes in to consciousness, her movements causing her to wince and move a hand to her abdomen. This is not the first time she has woken up since being brought to the hospital, since they had been waking her up every few hours to check her vitals, he had been told. She moves her head to the side when she realises that someone else has a hold of her right hand.

Will can’t help the tears that cloud his vison and he sees her hazel eyes slowly open and come to focus on him.  _He’s missed her so terribly._

Her hazel eyes suddenly go wide when she realises that it’s him, the haziness of sleep fading away quickly. “Is this a dream?” she croaks out, licking her lips.

He gives a smile at that because how many times had his life felt like a dream in the past few days and how many times had he asked himself that question? “No, MacKenzie it’s not a dream.”

She gives and unsure nod and he sees her swallow again, clearing her throat. Will figures that she’s thirsty and let’s go of her hand to pour her a glass of water from a pitcher near her bed. She gives a small whine at the loss of contact when he drops her hand so Will makes quick work of it and he lifts the straw to her lips she sips gratefully.

“Thanks” she says once she’s had her fill, still looking at him as if he might just be a figment of her drug addled imagination. “Where are my parents?”

“They’re outside in the waiting room with you brother, sister and Jim” He answers, sliding back down into the uncomfortable hospital chair.

“I was stabbed” she says as if she’s just registering it for the first time.

“I know” Will replies, taking her hand in his again.

Mac closes her eyes briefly at the contact before lifting her eyes to him again. “Why are you here Will?”

“I-” Will pause cutting himself off.  What was he supposed to say? He knew what he wanted to say- he wanted to tell her that he’s seen their future and that they get married and they are happy. He wanted to tell her that they are going to do the news together and do it with integrity; but most of all he wanted to tell her that they are going to have a daughter, a beautiful little girl who looked just like her and she is the best thing that they will ever do together. It’s all on the tip of his tongue, threatening to spill over. But then he remembers what she had said to him that night in that other world. She had thought that he wouldn’t come; that he was a hallucination.  Will doesn’t want her to think that what happened to him is the only reason that he had come today because that is the farthest thing from the truth. He loves her, he always has, and he just needed to be reminded of that and that’s what his strange little journey did. It reminded him.

“There’s a story” he breaths out and he sees her brows furrow in confusion. He knows this is coming out wrong and that he has to slow his thoughts down but he just had to get this out. “There’s a story about a little kid who keeps shredding paper and his parents take him to all kinds of doctors to get him to stop shredding paper. Finally they take him to the most expensive doctor in the world, who turns to the kid and he says ‘Kid, if you stop shredding paper your parents will stop dragging you to doctors’ and the kid turns to his parents and says ‘Why didn’t you just says so?’” Will stops then, looking up at her expectantly, and trying to catch his breath.

She looks even more confused now than when he began talking. She closes her eyes briefly and shakes her head a little, as if to make sure that this is real. “Will, I don’t underst-”

“The point of the story is that the kid could make himself happy if he just stopped” he interrupts using the one hand that isn’t wrapped around hers to dig in his pockets for the ring, fumbling with it slightly to get it between his thumb and forefinger, while not letting go of her hand. He sees Mac’s eyes widen and then look into his. “Well at least I think that’s the point, I don’t know; I’ve been trying to-uh figure it out. What I’m trying to say is that I’m in love with you and I love you and will you marry me?”

It comes out as a garbled mess and he sees the confusion written all over her face.

“Wait, what did you just say?” Mac asks bewilderedly, shifting her gaze between his face and the ring held between his fingers.

He’s jet lagged and his mind is a jumbled miss of events from the future and the past and the present and he’s trying to get this out without losing her. “I said will you marry me and before that I said that uh, I’m in love with you. That’s-that’s what I’m getting at, that’s the uh- I feel like I can do this so much better if I could have a second-”

“What in the fuck is happening right now?”

“If I- I don’t ever want to not be-”he’s fucking this up and he’s not making sense right now. He needs to stay on track. “No. I love you and I’m gonna go back to that and will you marry me.” He holds onto the memory of Mac and Stephanie curled up in bed next to him on that Sunday morning and he barrels forward. “And let me just say I think you should, I think you should say yes. But no matter what you say, there’s no chance that I’m ever going to hurt you again, I’m never going to let so much distance come between us again MacKenzie. No matter what you say I’m going to be in love with you for the rest of my life. There’s no way out of that, it’s just a physical law of the universe, you own me.”

Will smiles slightly to himself thinking about all that he has been through in such a short time, all the strange things that have happened. She really has no idea how much he means it when he says it’s a physical law of the universe, how unexplainable forces have pulled them back together again. “No matter what you say, I will never stop-”

“Yes” she calls out. Her voice is strong and sure stopping his rambling in its tracks. “Yes. I’m saying yes.”

Will is stunned and there’s a pause of breathe between them. “You’re saying yes?”

MacKenzie smiles, bright and wide, with a breathless little laugh and her eyes crinkling at the corners. “Yes”

Will feels his body deflate and all the stress and tension melt away. He lets out a sigh of relief because he finally gets to come home. “Thank God”

He’s standing up and leaning over her in the next second, his lips crashing into hers. It’s a clumsy kiss that takes her by surprise and it takes her a minute to kiss him back. Will is careful not to jolt her body and is cautious of her injuries. His lips are cold and her’s are a little dry but it’s wonderful and it feels like home.

She pulls back when they both need to catch their breaths and reaches out to tentatively cup his cheek. “This is not a dream?”

He smiles and shakes his head, pulling back from her slightly to slide the ring onto her left hand. “No, this is definitely not a dream.”

Her smile slips slightly as she looks down at the ring. “Why now? Have you forgiven me?”

Her voice is small and unsure and her eyes refuse to meet his and it breaks his heart. He’d been so stupid and caused them both so much pain for no reason. He will spend the rest of his life making it up to her. “Oh, MacKenzie. I forgave you the minute you said you were sorry. It just took a while for my brain to catch up to my heart.”

His voice is soft and he’s cupping her cheek, making sure she’s looking up at him to know that he means it. He had forgiven her long ago, his own anger just clouding his realisation of that fact. He swipes away the tears that roll down her cheeks with the pads of his thumb.

“I’m so sorry” she chokes out.

“I know Mac, and I’m sorry too. I’ve wasted so much time being angry but I read them all. I read all your emails on the flight over and I know how sorry you are. You never have to apologise to me again.”

She looks stunned. “You read them all?”

He nods. “I’m in love with you MacKenzie, I always have been; from the moment I met you. I never stopped. Not for a second.”

He’s going to remind her of that every day; until she’s satisfied that he won’t leave her ever again. They still have a lot to work out but they have each other and they have time.

They have the rest of their lives.


	13. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And even though they never talked again about his little journey, he could tell MacKenzie was thinking the same thing as her eye caught his throughout the rundown. Fate. Destiny. Inevitability.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well... this took forever to post. Sorry about that, I guess I just didn't want to let go of this story! I loved writing it and I hope you all enjoyed reading it. Thank you to everyone who stuck with this crazy plot that actually somehow turned out to be not as crazy as I thought.
> 
> I have been toying with the idea of a sequel to this, either going from where chapter 12 left off to fill in the gap between that and this epilogue. My other idea was a to write a series of one-shots covering all the time in between and beyond this last chapter. Let me know what you guys think about which sounds best. Both, maybe? Either way, I'll be posing up other Will/Mac stories ( that have been floating around for a while) in the coming weeks, taking a break from this particular plot bunny.
> 
> Anyway, thank you all again and please enjoy!

_“I didn’t fall in love with you; I walked into love with you, with my eyes wide open choosing to take every step along the way. I do believe in fate and destiny, but I also believe we are only fated to do the things that we’d choose anyway. And I’d choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I’d find you and I’d choose you” – Kiersten White, The Chaos of Stars_

-

One morning he wakes up to the sunshine on his face and his head heavy with sleep. It feels like he’s been sleeping for days, but he feels rested and refreshed.

Opening his eyes, the first thing he sees is his wife, sitting up in bed and watching him with a curious expression. A grin splits his face, because even after four years of marriage and countless mornings of waking up to her, this never gets old.

He smiles up at her, trying to will away the haze of the morning. His sleep felt long and it was like he hadn’t seen her in forever. “Good morning, Mrs McAvoy”

She’s on him in the next second, slender arms wrapping around his shoulders and crashing him fiercely into her. “It’s _you_. You’re back”

He can hear the relief in her voice and feel the tickle of her breath on his neck and it takes him only a few seconds before he gets over his shock and registers what MacKenzie meant.

His insane journey from years ago.

He hadn’t thought much about it in the past few year’s, too caught up in the present and enjoying his second chance at love.  He did recall it in the big moments, though.

Like when he was invited to speak at Northwestern and MacKenzie had said she couldn’t come with him because she was still trying to find her feet having just started working again. Then she had surprised him by showing up in the audience with que cards. He had thought she was a hallucination and he ended up fumbling up the rest of his panel. Then he had found her in his hotel room after the event and rambling on about how she had to come see him and that she was sorry she messed him up out there and most importantly that she was pregnant.

Will had been shocked to say the least. Not even a full year after her getting stabbed and she was already pregnant.  He asked her to marry him right then (well more like blurted it out, really). She had been planning the wedding for what felt like forever and they hadn’t wanted to rush things but Will was just so happy about the news, he had wanted her to be his _wife_ right then.

They got married two days later in a courthouse in New York, surrounded by their friends from work. Being married to her, actually being able to finally call her his wife is more amazing than he could ever have hoped.

He remembered his journey again when the doctors had told them that the pregnancy was high risk, with her still healing stab-wounds and that MacKenzie would have to be monitored throughout. His remembering that helped him stay calm when MacKenzie went into labour almost five weeks early and she was freaking out. Will was able to be her voice of reason throughout, holding her hand and telling her that they would have a baby girl who would grow up to be beautiful and strong just like her mother.

He remembers how relived he was when he heard little Stephanie’s first cry and how glad he was now that she was finally in the world. All ten finger and all ten toes and it felt like forever since he’d seen her and he’d missed her terribly.  He remembers whispering to her as they placed her in the incubator after birth. _Hey Stephie girl, I’m so glad to see you again._

 She was a tiny little thing and they need to monitor her for a while in NICU, but after a few weeks, they were able to release her when she had gained enough weight. His little miracle.

He was right all those years ago; saying goodbye to his wife and daughter.  Even though he hadn’t wanted to leave that other world, it was the best thing he could have done. Actually being there and watching Stephanie grow and building all those memories with MacKenzie; those were all things he was glad that he got to experience. It was all even better than he had thought.

He’s pulled back to the present when MacKenzie’s hand finds his cheek, her dark eyes searching his and the smooth planes of her body pressed up against his.

_She had always been his home_.

“Like you said, MacKenzie; it was always me”

**

Two months later she corners him in his office before the first run down of the day whispering in his ear something about that night when Stephanie broke her arm and what they got up to afterwards, as they make their way to the conference room.

He wracks his brain for a minute then he remembers _that_ night; a mix of both his past and his future in a strange way. It was that night that made him decide to stop being stubborn and go see Mac in the hospital. That night had led to all of this.

Will nods his head at her dumbly as she whispers that she’s pregnant before slipping easily into the conference room and jumping into the rundown.  He sits through the whole rundown not saying a word, his mind overflowing with thoughts and possibilities.

They had made a baby that night. His past self and his future self. It felt like coming full circle. It had been true all along; he was Other Will and other Will was him. And even though they never talked again about his little journey, he could tell MacKenzie was thinking the same thing as her eye caught his throughout the rundown.

_Fate. Destiny. Inevitability._

**

It was much to Stephanie’s dismay when her parents told her that her new sibling was to be a little brother and not a little sister, like she had requested.

Will had tried to hide his laugh in hands (and garnered a glare from his wife in return) when Stephanie had crossed her arms and demanded that they swop the boy for a girl.

Much to MacKenzie’s disappointment their daughter did not warm up to the idea of a baby brother throughout the whole pregnancy, and when he was born a week early, their first meeting didn’t go so well either.

Will had lowered his newborn son into his sisters carefully placed arms where she sat on a hospital bed against her mother’s stomach with Mackenzie framing her from behind just in case.

“Stephie, meet your new baby brother Samuel William McAvoy” MacKenzie whispers into their daughters dark ringlets as Will settles the baby in her small arms.

Samuel scrunches up his face and flails his little arms, trying to get comfortable in Stephanie’s arms. The new family of four sits in silence for a few minutes until-

“Daddy?” Stephanie prompted in a whisper, still looking down at the squirming pink bundle against her chest.

“Yeah?” Will called out just as softly as both his and his wife’s heads perked up from the first words out of their daughter since she had entered the hospital room.

“We shoulda’ gotten a puppy”

The words were said with a serious tone before Stephanie decided that she was bored with the game of holding the baby and demanded to be let down off the bed. MacKenzie’s worried eyes meet his own over their daughters head as he takes the small bundle from Stephanie. This wasn’t good.

**

Just as he and MacKenzie were fearing that Stephanie would never come around; a few months later he wakes up one night to his son’s cries over the baby monitor.

He runs a gentle hand over his wife’s sleeping form when she moans and tries to pry herself from sleep so she can get to the baby.

“Stay. I’ve got this” he leans over and shuts off the baby monitor, dropping a gentle kiss to the exposed skin of her shoulder before rolling out of bed.

The house is quiet at this time of night, except for the storm raging on outside and the rain against the windows. Will pads quietly down the hall to the baby’s room, rubbing the sleep from his eye with one hand and trying to listen out for Sam’s cries. The kid usually gets pretty grumpy when they don’t get to him right away, giving pitiful little whimpers until he’s in someone’s arms. As he got closer to the room though, he heard something completely different.

When he gets to the door of the nursery he finds it slightly ajar and the sight that greets him when he quietly opens the door fully and makes his way into the room spreads a dopey smile on his face.

Will finds Stephanie, with her ever faithful stuffed bear at her side leaning against the side of her brother’s crib, one small hand slipped through the bars, resting on his stomach.

“Shhh, Sammy, its okay, you’re okay.” The little girl whispers to the still whimpering baby, running her small hand over stomach his like she had seen her mother do so many times when she was upset. “Paddy doesn’t like the storms either but mommy and daddy will ‘tect us, okay?”

Will just stands back and watches the scene, seeing how his son’s cries fade into whimpers before tampering off at the sound of his sister’s gentle reassurances and soothing tone. It had been a tough four months of adjusting for all of them, especially his little girl- getting used to sharing her parents attention and them trying to get her to bond with her brother.

Will doesn’t even know how she heard the baby crying, given that her room in on a whole other floor but then he figures she was on the way to his and Mac’s room because of the thunder. She liked to crawl between them on nights like this, claiming that it was not her who was scared of the thunder but Paddington Bear.

“Hi princess” Will calls out coming behind where she’s standing on the side of the crib. “What are you doing?”

She twists her body to look up at him, one hand still rubbing Samuel’s stomach and the other firmly locked around Paddington. “The baby was crying. I think he’s scared of the thunder”

Will smiles down at her before running a hand through her messy hair, his brave girl, too stubborn to admit that she’s also afraid of the thunder storms. Just like her mother.

“Well you’re a very good big sister for checking on him” Will says dropping down to plant a quick kiss on the top of her head when he sees a brilliant smile on Stephanie’s face. He reaches over into the crib to pick Sam up cradling him in the crook of his arms before holding out his free hand for his little girl. “How about we get your brother a bottle then we can all go snuggle up with mommy in the big bed, sound good?”

Stephanie nods enthusiastically, holding tighter onto his hand and they make their way out of the room and down the hall. “She makes everything better”

His heart swelled at the sight of his blue-eyed four month old son in his arms and his daughter with her rumpled dark hair and small toes peeking out from her pyjama pants as she held tightly to his hand; the dream in his heart bursting to life. 

Whatever he had imagined his future to be years ago, he never could have imagined _this_. He never could have imagined his life would be this good.

*

(He does eventually get Stephanie her puppy a few years later).

*

_“It’s like coming home after a long trip. That’s what love is like. It’s like coming home” - Piper_

**Author's Note:**

> Well, that's it. I hope you enjoyed reading this and that the idea is not too weird to follow!


End file.
